*.") 



2.6 



'■ ^ 




SHAKESPEARE'S 



TRAGEDY OF HAMLET. 



WITH 



INTRODUCTION, AND NOTES EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL. 



FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND CLASSES. 



BY THE 



Rev. henry N. H UDSON. LL.D. 



II I HIM— — ^MiiiBumii mil I -trmmmmmmmmmmtl>mm\ 

SM- reet, 

, J3C .-- _--^£»ElKS, 



BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY GINN, HEATH, & CO. 

1883. 



.A2H8 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by 

Henry N. Hudson, 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



48 65 5 5 

AUG'/o m? 



Cusking &= Bramhall, Printers, Boston. 



PREFACE. 



SINCE the first volume of my School Shakespeare made 
its appearance, which was about nine years ago, very 
considerable advances have been made in the way of furni- 
ture and preparation needful or desirable for such a work. 
This is especially the case with the play here presented in a 
new dress. And my own long and constant occupation in 
teaching classes in Shakespeare has, I would fain hope, now 
brought me a somewhat larger and riper fitness for doing what 
is requisite in this particular field. Moreover the stereotype 
plates of this play, as also of some others, have been so much 
and so often used for the pamphlet sections of the volume, 
that they have become not a little worn and defaced. These 
are the principal reasons for setting forth the present edition. 
I still adhere to my old plan of foot-notes, instead of mass- 
ing the annotation all together at the end of the play. This 
is because ample experience has assured me, beyond all per- 
ad venture, that whatever of explanation young students need 
of Shakespeare's text — and they certainly need a good 
deal — is much better every way when placed directly under 
the eye, so that they can hardly miss it ; and because at least 
nineteen in twenty of such pupils will pass over an obscure 
word or phrase without understanding it, rather than stay to 
look up the explanation in another part of the volume. In 
this instance, however, I have meant to exclude from the foot- 
notes all matter but what appeared fairly needful or useful 



iv , HAMLET. 

for a proper understanding of the Poet's language and mean- 
ing. As will readily be seen from some of the foot-notes, I 
am indebted to Mr. Joseph Crosby, of Zanesville, O., for 
most valuable aid towards this part of my task. The matter 
so used has been communicated to me in a private corre- 
spondence with that gentleman, running through several 
years, and extending over the whole field of Shakespeare, 
and throwing more hght on dark and difficult passages than 
I have received from any other living commentator on the 
Poet. 

Another advantage of the method of foot-notes is, that 
it operates as a wholesome restraint against overdoing the 
work of annotation. And surely, if we may judge from what 
has been done, it is so much easier to multiply superfluous 
notes than to keep within the bounds of what is fairly need- 
ful in this kind, that some such restraint seems eminently 
desirable. Shakespeare, it scarce need be said, has suffered 
a great deal from this sort of exegetical incontinence. And 
perhaps the tendency is stronger now then ever before to 
smother his workmanship beneath a mass of needless and 
even obstructive annotation. An inordinate fecundity of 
explanation is quite too much the order of the day. There 
have been divers instances, of late, where we find the gloss, 
I cannot say out -weighing, but certainly far out-bulking, the 
text. Surely it is better to leave students a little unhelped 
than thus to encumber them with superfluous help. These 
burdens of unnecessary comment are really a "weariness of 
the flesh " ; and even hungry minds may well be repelled from 
a feast so overlaid with quenchers of the appetite. Nor have 
the Poet's editors yet got their minds untied from the old 
vice of leaving many of his darkest things unexplained, and 
of explaining a multitude of things that were better left to 



' PREFACE. V 

take care of themselves. For pupils ought not to be put to 
studying Shakespeare at all, until they have grown to such a 
measure of intelligence, that they may be safely presumed to 
know several things without being told. 

Such being the case, or at least my view of the case, I am 
not without apprehension, that some excess may be justly 
charged upon what is here done. Self-restrained and spar- 
ing as I have meant to be, still there is a considerable addi- 
tion to the number of notes given in my former edition. 
But, in the matter of annotation, it is not easy to strike just 
the right medium between too much and too little. Here, 
again, I have been mainly guided by the results of my own 
experience in teaching ; aiming to give such and so many 
notes as I have found needful or conducive to a fair under- 
standing of the Poet's thought. 

In the present stage of Shakespearian study, I suppose it 
would hardly do, even in a book designed for school use, to 
leave the matter of textual comment and textual correction 
altogether untouched. Accordingly there will be found, at 
the end of the play, a body of Critical Notes, wherein I 
have drawn together whatever seemed necessary or desirable 
to be said in the way of textual criticism, and of comment on 
such particulars of textual correction as are here admitted. 
In doing this, I have almost unavoidably been led to note a 
few instances of different readings. 

These few cases excepted, I have purposely, and with full 
deliberation, abstained from every thing in the line of vari- 
orum comment and citation. For, indeed, such matter, 
however right and good in its place, can hardly be of any use 
or interest save to those who are making or intending to 
make a specialty of Shakespearian lore. But, of the pupils 
and even the teachers in our schools and colleges, probably 



VI HAMLET. 

not one in five hundred has, or ought to have, any thought 
of becoming a specialist in Shakespeare, or a hnguistic anti- 
quary in any department of study. To such students, a 
minute discussion or presentation of various readings must 
needs be a stark impertinence ; and its effect, if it have 
any, can hardly be other than to confuse and perplex their 
thoughts. In this, as in other walks of human service, the 
processes of elaborate study are of very hmited use, and may 
well be confined to a few ; while the last results of such 
study are or may be highly useful to all. I hold, indeed, 
that Shakespeare ought to be made much more of than he is 
in our higher education : not, however, with the view of fitting 
people to be editors and critics ; but that they may have 
their minds and hearts rightly attuned to the delectations of 
his poetry and eloquence and wisdom ; and that they may 
carry from the study some fair preparation of liberal thought 
and culture and taste into the common pursuits and interests 
of life. The world is getting prodigiously overstocked with 
authors ; so many are aspiring to gain a living by their wits, 
that the thing is becoming a dreadful nuisance : and it really 
seems full time that we should begin to take more thought 
how a condition of "plain living " may be sanctified with the 
grace of " high thinking " ; and how even the humbler and 
more drudging forms of labour may be sweetened by the 
pure and ennobhng felicities of unambitious intelligence. 

A question has lately been raised, and is still pending, as 
to the comparative value of verbal and of what is called ses- 
thetic criticism ; and some have spoken disparagingly, not 
to say contemptuously, of the latter, as a mere irrelevancy, 
which they would fain be rid of altogether. Verbal criticism 
certainly has its place, and in its place is not to be dis- 
pensed with ; and it has at least this advantage over the 



PREFACE. VU 

Other, that it is strictly necessary in the study of such authors 
as Shakespeare, who abounds in words and phrases which, 
to common readers, are quite unintelHgible without such 
help. This, however, may easily be overdone, and in fact 
sometimes has been hugely overdone, insomuch as to be- 
come little better than a sheer incumbrance ; nevertheless, on 
the whole, it has been of incalculable service. But the other, 
I must think, has done good service too, and has fairly justi- 
fied its claims to a high estimate in Shakespearian lore : 
albeit I have to confess that some discredit has of late come 
upon it, from the fact that, in divers cases, it has taken to 
very odd and eccentric courses, and has displayed an ill- 
starred propensity to speculate and subtilize the Poet's work- 
manship clean out of its natural propriety. Transcendental 
metaphysics, whether appHed to science, to philosophy, to 
art, or to whatsoever else, of course loves to "reason high, 
and finds no end, in wandering mazes lost." Whatever it 
takes in hand, it can easily discover any meaning it wants, 
and as easily argue away any meaning not in accordance 
with its idealistic predilections ; so using its alchemy as to 
" extract sunbeams from cucumbers," or to resolve gold into 
vapour, just as it happens to list. But these abuses may very 
well be struck off without casting away the thing itself. And 
the aesthetic criticism of Coleridge, Schlegel, Charles Lamb, 
Hazlitt, and Mrs. Jameson, has probably done more to diffuse 
and promote the study of Shakespeare, than all the verbal 
criticism in the world put together. 

The Introduction here given, as also some of the foot-notes, 
is mainly occupied with matter in this line ; the aim being, 
to aid such students as may care to be aided, towards what 
may be termed the interior study of Shakespeare's charac- 
ters. Ordinarily, in books designed for such use as the 



Vlll HAMLET. 

present, I deem it better to reproduce extracts from ap- 
proved masters in critical discourse than to obtrude any 
judgments of my own. But my views of Hamlet are so 
different from those commonly put forth, that in this case I 
judged it best to set them aside, and to occupy the limited 
space at my disposal with a presentation of my own thoughts. 
In this part of the work, I have derived much furtherance 
from Professor Karl Werder's able essay on Hamlet, portions 
of which, very choicely translated, are given in Mr. H. H. 
Furness's great and admirable work, the variorum edition of 
the play. My own views were indeed substantially the same 
long before I had any knowledge of the German Professor, 
and even before his essay was written ; but I would not if I 
could, and certainly could not if I would, disguise that I am 
indebted to him for much aid, and more encouragement, 
towards a full statement and expression of them. 

The occasion moves me to protest, with all possible earn- 
estness, against the course now too commonly pursued in 
our studying and teaching of Enghsh literature. We seem 
indeed to have got stuck fast in the strange notion, that chil- 
dren are never learning any thing unless they are conscious 
of it : and so we are sparing no pains to force in them a 
premature and most unhealthy consciousness of learning. 
Nothing is left to the free and spontaneous vitalities of 
Nature. Things have come to such a pass witn us, that a 
pupil must live, 

Knowing that he grows wiser every day, 
Or else not live at all, and seeing too 
Each little drop of wisdom as it falls 
Into the dimpling cistern of his heart. 

Hence our education is kept at a restless fever-heat of am- 



PREFACE. IX 

bition and emulation ; and this naturally involves an in- 
cessant urging of high -pressure methods. We have no 
faith in any sowing, save where the seeds " forthwith spring 
up, because they have no deepness of earth." So eager and 
impatient are we for immediate results, that the conditions 
and processes of inward growth are, as far as possible, 
worked off and got rid of. But the results attained by this 
straining and forcing are necessarily false and delusive ; and 
presently wither away, because they have no root. 

Thus in our hot haste to make the young precociously 
intellectual, we are just burning real health and vigour of 
intelligence out of them ; or, at all events, the best that can 
be gained by such a course is but what Wordsworth justly 
deprecates as " knowledge purchased with the loss of 
power." For, in truth, when people, of whatever age, see 
themselves growing from day to day, they are not really 
growing at all, but merely bloating ; — a puffing-up, not a 
building-up. And we shall assuredly find, in due time, nay, 
we are already finding, that those who get ripe before they 
are out of their teens begin to rot before passing their twen- 
ties. For such a forced and premature action of the mind 
can only proceed by overtaxing and exhausting other parts 
of the system ; and must needs be followed by a collapse of 
the mind itself equally premature. In other words, where 
the brain is built up at the expense of the stomach, the brain 
itself must soon break down. And, as " the child is father 
of the man," so of course the smart boys of our educational 
hot-beds can only blossom out into grown-up intellectual 
manikins. 

Now, in opposition to all this, be it said, again and again, 
that the work of education is necessarily secret and uncon- 
scious just in proportion as it is deep and generative. For 



X HAMLET. 

the mind is naturally conscious only of what touches its sur- 
face, rustles in its fringes, or roars in its outskirts ; while 
that which works at its vital springs, and feeds its native 
vigour, is as silent as the growing of the grass, as unconscious 
as the assimilation of the food and the vitalizing of the 
blood. When its springs of life are touched to their finest 
issues, then it is that we are least sensible of the process. 
So it is rightly said," " the gods approve the depth and not 
the tumult of the soul." Only the dyspeptic are conscious 
of their gastric operations : the eupeptic never think of 
their stomachs, are not even aware that they have any. 

One would suppose that a little reflection on the workings 
of the infant mind might teach us all this. For children, 
during their first five years, before they can tell any thing 
about it, or make any show of it in set recitations, and while 
they are utterly unconscious of it, do a vast amount of study- 
ing and learning ; probably storing up more of real intelli- 
gence than from any subsequent ten years of formal school- 
ing. And such schooHng is no doubt best and wisest when 
it continues and copies, as far as may be, those instinctive 
methods of Nature. But the pity of it is, that our educa- 
tion, as if "sick of self-love," appears to spurn the old wis- 
dom of Nature, preferring to take its rules and measures 
from a proud and arrogant intellectuahsm. 

In the mental and moral world, as in the physical, the 
best planting is always slow of fruitage : generally speaking, 
the longer the fruit is in coming, the sounder and sweeter 
when it comes ; an interval of several years, perhaps of ten, 
or even twenty, being little time enough for its full and per- 
fect advent. For growth is a thing that cannot be extempo- 
rized ; and, if you go about to extemporize it, you will be 
sure to cheat or be cheated with a worthless surface imita- 



PREFACE. XI 

tion : that it is to say, in place of a growth, which is slow 
and silent, but full of juice and taste withal, will be substi- 
tuted a swift, loud, vapid manufacture. 

What a teacher, therefore, most especially needs (and 
parents need it too) is the faith that knows how to work 
and wait ; — to work diligently, carefully, earnestly ; to wait 
calmly, patiently, hopefully ; — that faith which, having its 
eye on the far-off future, does not thirst for present rewards, 

Nor with impatience from the season ask 
More than its timely produce. 

For Nature, the honest old Mother, is far better, stronger, 
richer, than our busy and meddlesome intellectualists, who 
are straining so hard to get ahead of her, have the heart to 
conceive. Human wisdom may indeed aid and further her 
processes ; but it is stark folly to think of superseding them. 
And the forcing system now so much in vogue is essentially 
a levelling system ; though, to be sure, it can only level 
downwards : perhaps, indeed, the circumstance of its look- 
ing to a compelled equahty is what makes it so popular ; — 
a thing sure to issue in a manifold spuriousness ! For its 
estimate of things is, for the most part, literally preposterous. 
Minds of a Hght and superficial cast it over-stimulates into a 
morbid quickness and volubility, wherein a certain liveHness 
and fluency of memory, going by rote, parrot-like, enables 
them to win flashy and vainglorious triumphs by a sort of 
cheap and ineffectual phosphorescence ; thus making them, 
as Professor Huxley says, " conceited all the forenoon of 
their hfe, and stupid all its afternoon " : while, upon minds 
of a more robust and solid make, which are growing too 
much inwardly to do any shining outwardly, it has a dis- 
heartening and depressing effect. Thus the system operates 



XU HAMLET. 

to quench the deeper natures, while kindling false fires in the 
shallower. 

Hence, no doubt, the feeling, which can hardly be new to 
any thoughtful teacher or parent, that " strongest minds are 
often those of whom the noisy school hears least." For, 
under the system in question, modest vigour is naturally 
ecKpsed by pert and forward imbecility, — the proper charac- 
teristic of minds that have not strength enough to keep still. 
But minds thus heated into untimely efflorescence can hardly 
ripen into any thing but sterility and barrenness : before the 
season of fruitage, the sap is all dried out of them. To 
quote Professor Huxley again : " The vigour and freshness, 
which should have been stored up for the hard struggle for 
existence in practical life, have been washed out of them by 
precocious mental debauchery, — by book-gluttony and les- 
son-bibbing : their faculties are worn out by the strain upon 
their callow brains, and they are demoralized by worthless, 
childish triumphs before the real work of life begins." Of 
those who are so incessantly driving on this bad system, we 
may well ask, with Wordsworth, — 

When will their presumption learn, 
That in th' unreasoning progress of the world 
A wiser spirit is at work for us, 
A better eye than theirs, most prodigal 
Of blessings, and most studious of our good. 
Even in what seem our most unfruitful hours ? 

Now, Shakespeare, above all other authors, should be 
allowed to teach as Nature teaches, else he ought not to 
be used as a text-book at all. And here, I suspect, the 
great danger is, that teachers, having too little faith in the 
spontaneous powers of Nature, will undertake to do too 
much, will keep thrusting themselves, their specialties and 



PREFACE. Xlll 

artificial preparations, between the pupil and the author. 
With average pupils, if of sufficient age, Shakespeare will 
make his way, slowly and silently indeed, but effectively, pro- 
vided his proper efficacy be not strangled and defeated by 
an excess of learned verbaHsm. For his great superiority 
lies very much in this, that he writes close to facts as they 
are : no cloud of words, nothing, stands between his vision 
and the object. Hence with him, pre-eminently, language 
is used as a transparent, invisible vehicle of thought and 
matter ; so that the mind, if rightly put in communication 
with him, thinks not of his expression at all, but loses sight 
of it, in the force and vividness of what is expressed. Beau- 
tiful his speech is indeed ; but its beauty hes in this very 
thing, that it is the crystal shrine, itself unseen, of the speak- 
ing soul within. The less, therefore, the attention of students 
is diverted from his matter to his language by external calls, 
the quicker and stronger will be their interest in him ; — an 
interest free, natural, and unconscious indeed, but all the 
better for that : so that the teacher will best further it by let- 
ting it alone ; will most effectively help it by leaving it un- 
helped. For the learning of words is a noisy process ; 
whereas the virtue of things steals into the mind with noise- 
less step, and is ever working in us most when we perceive 
it least. And so, when Shakespeare is fairly studied in the 
manner here proposed, the pupil will naturally be drawn to 
forget himself ; all thought of the show he is to make will be 
cheated into healthful sleep ; unless, ay, unless — 

Some intermeddler still is on the watch 

To drive him back, and pound him, hke a stray, 

Within the pinfold of his own conceit. 

Not, however, but that something of special heed should 



XIV HAMLET. 

be given to the Poet's language, and his use of words ; for 
many of these are either unfamihar or used in unfamiliar 
senses : but this part of the study should be kept strictly 
subordinate to the understanding of his thought and mean- 
ing, and should be pushed no further than is fairly needful 
to that end. But I have ample cause for saying, that in many 
cases, if not in most, altogether too much time and strength 
are spent in mere word-mongering and lingual dissection ; a 
vice as old indeed as Cicero's time, who pointedly ridicules 
it in describing one as " a chanter of formulas, a bird-catcher 
of syllables." In fact, as we are now chiefly intent on edu- 
cating people into talkers, not workers, so the drift of our 
whole education is, to make language an ultimate object of 
study, instead of using it as a medium for converse with 
things : for we all know, or ought to know, that the readiest 
and longest talkers are commonly those who have little or 
nothing to say. On every side, teachers are to be found 
attending very disproportionately, not to say exclusively, to 
questions of grammar, etymology, rhetoric, and the mere 
technicalities of speech ; thus sticking for ever in the husk 
of language, instead of getting through into the kernel of 
matter and thought. 

Now, as before implied, Shakespeare, least of all, ought to 
be taught or studied after this fashion. A constant dissecting 
of his words and syllables just chokes off all passage of his 
blood into the pupil's mind. Our supreme master in the 
knowledge of human nature, it is little less than downright 
sacrilege to be thus using him as the raw material of philo- 
logical exercitations. In the degree that it is important 
people should acquire a taste for him and learn to love him, 
just in that degree is it a sin to use him so ; for such use 
can hardly fail to breed a distaste for him and an aversion to 



PREFACE. XV 

Iiim. Doubtless there is a time for parsing, as there is for 
other things ; but people cannot parse themselves or be 
parsed into a relish for Shakespeare's workmanship, or into a 
fruitful converse with his treasures of wisdom and power. 

And with the young, especially, the study of vernacular 
authors should be prosecuted in entire subservience to the 
knowledge of things : if turned into a word-mongering pro- 
cess, it touches no free and natural springs of interest, and 
so becomes tedious and dull, — just the thing to defeat all 
that pleasure which is the pulse of mental Hfe. For the 
proper business, as also the healthy instinct of young minds 
is, to accumulate and lay in stores of matter : the analytic 
and discriminative processes naturally belong to a later pe- 
riod ; and to anticipate the proper time of them is a very 
bad mistake. But the knowledge of things proceeds too 
slowly and too silently for the ends of school-room show. 
Boys in school and college shine chiefly by the knowledge 
of words, for this is the mere work of memory ; but, in prac- 
tical life, men are useful and successful in proportion to their 
knowledge of things : which knowledge proceeds, to be sure, 
by the measures of gj-owth, and therefore is far less available 
for competitive examinations and exhibitory purposes. And 
so, forsooth, our children must be continually drilled in a 
sort of microscopic verbalism, as if we had nothing so much 
at heart as to make them learned in words, ignorant of 
things. Hence, too, instead of learning how to do some one 
thing, or some few things, they must learn how to smatter of 
all things : instead, for example, of being taught to sing, 
they must be taught to prate scientifically about music. 

Thus our educational methods are all converging to the 
one sole purpose of generating a depurated and conceited 
intellectualism ; which is just about the shallowest, barrenest. 



XVI HAMLET. 

windiest thing in the whole compass of man's intellectual 
globe. But, what is strangest of all, so becharmed are we 
with our supposed progress in this matter, as not to see, what 
is nevertheless as plain as the Sun at midday, that we are 
taking just the right course to stunt and thwart the intellect 
itself. For the several parts of the mind must grow in pro- 
portion, keeping touch and time together in the unity of a 
common sap and circulation, else growth itself is but decay 
in disguise. And when the intellectual man, through pride 
of self-sufiicingness, sequesters itself from its natural com- 
merce and reciprocation with the moral, emotional, and 
imaginative man, the intellect must needs go into a dry-rot. 

I was convinced long ago, and further experience has but 
strengthened that conviction, that in the study of English 
authors the method of recitations is radically at fault, and 
ought seldom if ever to be used. For that method naturally 
invites, and indeed almost compels, the pupil to spend all 
his force on those points only which are, or may be made, 
available for immediate recitational effect. But, if the author 
be really worth studying, all, or nearly all, that is best in him 
escapes through the fingers of this process, and is left be- 
hind ; the pupil having no occasion for attending to it, nor any 
strength of attention to spare for it. He does nothing but 
skip lightly over the surface of what is before him, picking 
up such small items as the tongue and memory can handle ; 
but remaining quite innocent of all its deeper efficacies, 
which would indeed be rather an incumbrance than a help 
in reference to what he has in view. For the best thing that 
the best authors can do is to quicken and inspire the stu- 
dent's mind : but quickening and inspiration are nowise 
things to be recited ; their natural effect is to prevent glib- 



PREFACE. xvii 

ness of memory and tongue : and, while the pupil is intent 
only on what he can recite, the author's quickening and inspir- 
ing power has no chance to work ; and he just runs or shdes 
over it without being touched by it, or catching any virtue 
from it. It is just the difference of mere acquirement and 
culture : for what the mind gains in the way of acquirement 
merely, is lost almost as quickly as it is got ; but whatever of 
culture is gained abides as an inseparable part of the mind 
itself. Thus the same rule holds here as in so many other 
things, that, when pupils are studying merely or mainly for 
effect, all the best effect of the study is inevitably missed. 

For these reasons, I have never had and never will have 
any thing but simple exercises ; the pupils reading the author 
under the teacher's direction, correction, and explanation ; 
the teacher not even requiring, though usually advising, them 
to read over the matter in advance. Thus it is a joint com- 
muning of teacher and pupils with the author for the time 
being; just that, and nothing more. Nor, assuredly, can 
such communion, in so far as it is genial and free, be without 
substantial and lasting good ; far better indeed than any pos- 
sible cramming of mouth and memory for recitation. The 
one thing needful here is"", that the pupils rightly understand 
and feel what they read : this secured, all the rest will take 
care of itself; because, when this is gained, the work is, not 
indeed done, but fairly and effectively begun ; and what is 
once so begun, will be ever after in course of doing, never 
done. For people cannot dwell, inteUigently and with open 
minds, in the presence of "sweetness and hght," or within 
the sound of wisdom and eloquence, without being enriched, 
— enriched secretly, it may be, but permanently; for the 
enrichment is in the shape of germs, which have in them 
the virtue of perennial growth. And when I find the pupils 



XVlll HAMLET. 

taking pleasure in what they are about, entering into it with 
the zest and spirit of honest dehght, then I know fuJl well 
that they are drinking in the author's soul-power, and that 
what they are drinking in is going to the right spot. For, to 
find joy and sweetness in the taste of what is pure and good, 
is the strongest pledge that things are going well. And such 
a communing of youthful minds with genius and mellow 
wisdom has something of mystery and almost of magic in 
it. Rather say, it is a holy sacrament of the mind. As 
beautiful too as it is beneficent : in this naughty-lovely, or 
this lovely-naughty, world of ours, I hardly know of a lovelier 
sight. There is, be assured there is, regeneration in it. 



INTRODUCTION. 



History of the Play. 

" 'nr^HE Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, as it 
jL was lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain's Serv- 
ants," was registered at the Stationers' on the 26th of July, 
1602. This entry undoubtedly refers to Shakespeare's trag- 
edy, and is the first we hear of it. The tragedy was printed 
in 1603. It was published again in 1604; and in the title- 
page of that issue we have the words, " enlarged to almost 
as much again as it was." This latter edition was reprinted 
in 1605, and again in 161 1 ; besides an undated quarto, 
which is commonly referred to 1607, as it was entered at the 
Stationers' in the Fall of that year. These are all the issues 
known to have been made before the play reappeared in the 
folio of 1623. The quartos, all but the first, have a number 
of highly important passages that are not in the folio ; while, 
on the other hand, the foHo has a few, less important, that 
are wanting in the quartos. 

It is generally agreed that the first issue was piratical. It 
gives the play but about half as long as the later quartos, 
and carries in its face abundant evidence of having been 
greatly marred and disfigured in the making-up. Mr. Dyce 
says, "It seems certain that in the quarto of 1603 we have 
Shakespeare's first conception of the play, though with a text 
mangled and corrupted throughout, and perhaps formed on 



2 HAMLET. 

the notes of some shOrt-hand writer, who had imperfectly 
taken it down during representation." Nevertheless it is 
evident that the play was very different then from what it 
afterwards became. Polonius is there called Corambis, and 
his man Reynaldo is called Montano. Divers scenes and 
passages, some of them such as a reporter would be least 
likely to omit, are wanting altogether. The Queen is repre- 
sented as concerting and actively co-operating with Hamlet 
against the King's hfe -; and she has an interview of consid- 
erable length with Horatio, who informs her of Hamlet's 
■ escape from the ship bound for England, and of his safe 
return to Denmark ; of which scene the later issues have no 
traces whatever. All this fully ascertains the play to have 
undergone a thorough recasting from what it was when the 
copy of 1603 was taken. 

A good deal of question has been made as to the time 
when the tragedy was first written. It is all but certain that the 
subject was done into a play some years before Shakespeare 
took it in hand, as we have notices to that effect reaching as 
far back as 1589. That play, however, is lost; and our 
notices of it give no clue to the authorship. On the other 
hand, there appears no good reason for believing that any 
form of Shakespeare's Hamlet was in being long before we 
hear of it as entered at the Stationers', in 1602. 

Source of the Plot. 

Whether, or how far, Shakespeare may have borrowed his 
materials from any pre-existing play on the subject, we have 
no means of knowing. The tragedy was partly founded on 
a work by Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish historian, written as 
early as 1204, but not printed till 15 14. The incidents, as 
related by him, were borrowed by Belleforest, through whose 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

French version, probably, the tale found its way to the 
English stage. It was called The History of Hamblet. As 
there told, the story is, both in matter and style, uncouth 
and barbarous in the last degree ; a savage, shocking tale of 
lust and murder, unredeemed by a single touch of art or 
fancy in the narrator. The scene of the incidents is laid 
before the introduction of Christianity into Denmark, and 
when the Danish power held sway in England : further than 
this the tinie is not specified. A close sketch of such parts 
of the tale as were specially drawn upon for the play is all 
I have room for. 

Roderick, King of Denmark, divided his kingdom into 
provinces, and placed governors in them. Among these 
were two warlike brothers, Horvendile and Fengon. The 
greatest honour that men of noble birth could at that time 
win was by piracy, wherein Horvendile surpassed all others. 
Cohere, King of Norway, was so moved by his fame that he 
challenged him to fight, body to body ; and the challenge 
was accepted, the victor to have all the riches that were in 
the other's ship. Cohere was slain ; and Horvendile re- 
turned home with much treasure, most of which he sent to 
King Roderick, who thereupon gave him his daughter Geruth 
in marriage. Of this marriage sprang Hamblet, the hero of 
the tale. 

Fengon became so envious of his brother, that he resolved 
to kill him. Before doing this, he corrupted his wife, whon^ 
he afterwards married. Young Hamblet, thinking he wa? 
likely to fare no better than his father, went to feigning him- 
self mad. One of Fengon's friends suspected his madness 
to be feigned, and counselled Fengon to use some crafty 
means for discovering his purpose. The plot being all laid, 
the counsellor went into the Queen's chamber, and hid 



V 



4 HAMLET. 

behind the hangings. Soon after, the Queen and the Prince 
came in ; but the latter, suspecting some treachery, kept up 
his counterfeit of madness, and went to beating with his 
arms upon the hangings. Feeling something stir under them, 
he cried, " A rat, a rat ! " and thrust his sword into them ; 
which done, he pulled the man out half dead, and made an 
end of him. He then has a long interview with his mother, 
which ends in a pledge of mutual confidence between them. 
She engages to keep his secret faithfully, and to aid him in 
his purpose of revenge; swearing that she had often pre- 
vented his death, and that she had never consented to the 
murder of his father. 

Fengon's next device was to send the Prince to England, 
with secret letters to have him there put to death. Two of 
his Ministers being sent along with him, the Prince, again 
suspecting mischief, when they were at sea read their com- 
mission while they were asleep, and substituted one requir- 
ing the bearers to be hanged. All this and much more 
being done, he returned to Denmark, and there executed 
his revenge in a manner horrid enough. 

There is, besides, an episodical passage in the tale, from 
which the Poet probably took some hints, especially in the 
hero's melancholy mood, and his apprehension that " the 
spirit he has seen may be the Devil." I condense a portion 
of it : " In those days the northern parts of the world, living 
then under Satan's laws, were full of enchanters, so that 
there was not any young gentleman that knew not something 
therein. And so Hamblet had been instructed in that 
devilish art whereby the wicked spirit abuseth mankind. It 
toucheth not the matter herein to discover the parts of divi- 
nation in man, and whether this Prince, by reason of his 
over-great melancholy, had received those impressions, divin- 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

ing that which never any had before declared." The " im- 
pressions " here spoken of refer to the means whereby 
Hamblet found out the secret of his father's murder. 

It is hardly needful to add that Shakespeare makes the 
persons Christians, clothing them with the sentiments and 
manners of a much later period than they have in the tale ; 
though he still places the scene at a time when England paid 
some sort of homage to the Danish crown ; which was before 
the Norman Conquest. Therewithal the Poet uses very great 
freedom in regard to time ; transferring to Denmark, in fact, 
the social and intellectual England of his own day. 

General Characteristics of the Play. 

We have seen that the Hamlet of 1604 was greatly en- 
larged. The enlargement, however, is mainly in the contem- 
plative and imaginative parts, little being added in the way 
of action and incident. And in respect of those parts, there 
is no comparison between the two copies ; the difference 
is literally immense, and of such a kind as to evince a most 
astonishing growth of intellectual power and resource. In 
the earlier text we have little more than a naked though in 
the main well-ordered and well-knit skeleton, which, in the 
later, is everywhere replenished and glorified with large, rich 
volumes of thought and poetry ; where all that is incidental 
and circumstantial is made subordinate to the living energies 
of mind and soul. 

Accordingly Schlegel well describes this play as " a tragedy 
of thought." Such is, indeed, its character ; in which re- 
spect it stands alone among all the tragedies in being ; and 
it takes this character from the hero's mind. Hamlet every- 
where floods the scene with intellectual wealth, and this in 
the varied forms of wit, humour, poetry, and high philosophy. 



6 HAMLET. 

with large stores of moral and practical wisdom : affluent 
with the spoils of learning, of genius, and art, he pours out 
in inexhaustible variety and profusion, enriching and adorn- 
ing whatever he touches, and making it fresh, racy, delecta- 
ble, and instructive. And he does all this without any sign 
of exertion ; does it with the ease and fluency of a free native 
impulse, such as to preclude the idea of its being a special 
purpose with him. For, with all his redundancy of mental 
treasure, he nowhere betrays the least ostentation of intellect. 
It is plainly the unlaboured, unaffected issue of a mind so full 
that it cannot choose but overflow. 

But perhaps the leading characteristic of this play lies in 
its strong resemblance to the Classic Tragedy, in that the 
action is, in a very pecuHar degree, dominated by what the 
ancients called Fate, but what, in Christian language, is 
termed Providence. In no other modern drama do we take 
so deep an impression of a superhuman power presiding 
over a war of irregular and opposing forces, and, calmly 
working out its own purpose through the baffled, disjointed, 
and conflicting purposes of human agents. Of course, the 
Poet's genius is itself the providence of the play. But here, 
again, his insight is so profound and so just, his workmanship 
so true to the c&urse of human experience, that all things 
come to pass just as if ordered by the Divine Providence of 
the world. And, however the persons go at cross-aims with 
each other or themselves, they nevertheless still move true to 
the author's aim : their confused and broken schemes he 
uses as the elements of a higher order ; and the harshest 
discords of their plane of thought serve to enrich and deepen 
the harmonies of his ; their very blunders and failures minis- 
tering to his success, their wilfulness to his law, their mad- 
ness to his reason. 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

Political Basis of the Action. 

The principal personages of the drama stand at or near 
the head of the State, and thus move in the highest pubhc 
representative capacity : the whole world of Denmark is 
most nearly concerned in them as the recognized supreme 
organs of the national life and law. In the political order 
of the play, the Danish crown is partly elective, partly heredi- 
tary ; that is to say, elective within the circle of a particular 
family and kindred. Whatever there is of hereditary right 
belongs to the Queen, who is accordingly described as " the 
imperial jointress of this warlike State." She was the only 
child of the former King ; and Hamlet's father was broiiglit^ 
within the circle of eligibility by his marriage with her. Of* 
course, when her first husband died, and she married a sec- 
ond, the second became eligible just as the first had done. 
So that Claudius, the present King, holds the crown by the 
same legal title and tenure as Hamlet's father had held it. 

A horrible crime has been committed, — a crime the f 
meanest, the blackest, the hatefullest that man is capable of. 
Claudius has murdered his own brother and his King ; steal- 
ing upon him in his sleep, and pouring a slow but deadly 
poison in his ear, which so wrought that he seemed to die 
of a natural though mysterious disease. The deed was done 
so secretly and with such consummate craft as to elude and \ 
defy all human discovery. It was and could be known only \ 
to the author of it, and to God ; even the victim knew noth- \ 
ing of it till after his death. No trace of the crime, not an [ 
atom of evidence, nothing even to ground a suspicion upon, 
exists, save in the conscience of the criminal himself. So 
that the hideous secret hes buried in the grave of the mur- 
dered man ; and no revelation of it is possible on Earth, but 




8 , HAMLET. 

by his coming out of the tomb. Through this act of fratri- 
cide and regicide, Claudius has hewed his way to the Danish ! 
throne ; he having beforehand made love to the Queen, and 
seduced and corrupted her. 

Claudius is essentially a low, coarse, sensual, brutish vil- 
lain ; without honour and without shame ; treacherous and 
cruel in the last degree ; at once hateful, loathsome, and 
:^ble. At the same time he is mighty shrewd and saga- 
pick and fertile of resource ; inscrutably artful and 
withal, utterly remorseless and unscrupulous, and 
nothing, however base or wicked, to gain his ends, 
Tcure himself in what he has gained. Thus he stands 
*a. bold bad man," of a character too vile and too 
hocking to be suffered to live, yet exceedingly formidable to 
contend with, — formidable from his astuteness, formidable 
from his unscrupulousness ; above all, formidable from the 
powers and prerogatives with which he is invested as an 
absolute king. Such as he is, Hamlet knows him thoroughly ; f 
understands alike his meanness, his malice, and his cunning ; /. 
takes the full measure both of his badness and his potency. [ 
It appears that the Queen was nowise an accomplice di- 
rectly in the murder ; that she had, indeed, no knowledge of 
it, perhaps no suspicion. But she has incurred guilt enough 
in suffering such a wretch to make love to her, when she had 
a husband living ; in being seduced by his " wicked wit and 
gifts "; and then in rushing, with indecent and shameless haste, 
into a marriage held deeply criminal in itself, even though 
the forms of decorum had been strictly observed in the time 
and manner of it. These doings have fallen with terrible, 
weight upon her son, oppressing his soul with unutterable 
grief and shame, and filling his mind with irrepressible sus- 
picions and divinings of foul play. He knows not how or 




INTRODUCTION. 9 

why it is, but he feels that the air about him is all tainted with I" 
the breath of hypocrisy and lust, of treachery and murder; 
insomuch that he would gladly escape, even by his own death^ 
from scenes so horrible and so disgusting. 

Hamlet's Madness. 

The proper action of the play turns upon the circumstance^ 
that the hero meets and converses with the ghost of hi|^' 
dered father, and thence learns by what means Clau^ 
reached his present position. He thereupon starts 
most strange, inexplicable course of behaviour : he s^ 
beside himself ; acts as if he were crazy. — Shakespeaf 
sons, generally, affect us just like those in actual life ;*so 
we severally take different impressions and form divers^ 
opinions of them. Especially is it so in the case of Hamlet 
Hence it has been variously argued and discussed, wh^ef 
his madness be real or feigned, or whether it be someti 
the one, sometimes the other. My own judgment is, an 
long has been, that he is really mad ; deranged not indeed . 
in all his faculties, nor in any of them continuously ; that is j 
to say, the derangement is partial and occasional : in other | 
words, he is mad in spots and at times ; paroxysms of wildness ' 
and fury alternating with intervals of serenity and composure.! 
My main reasons for this judgment are as follows : — f 

I . From the natural structure and working of his mind ; 
from the recent doings in the royal family; from the state 
of things at the Court ; still more from his interview with the 
Ghost, and the Ghost's appalling disclosures and injunctions, 
" shaking his disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches 
of his soul " ; above all, from his instant view and grasp of 
the whole dire situation in which he is now placed ; — from 
all this, he ought to be crazy ; and it were vastly to his credit. 




lO HAMLET. 

both morally and mentally, to be so : we might well be 
amazed at the morbid strength or the natural weakness of 
his mind, if he were not so. We are told that, against stu- 
pidity, the gods themselves are powerless. And, sure enough, 
there are men with hearts so hard, and with heads so stolid 
and stockish, that even the gods cannot make them mad ; 
, at least, not, unless through some physical disease. Hamlet, 
I think, can hardly be a man of that stamp. 

2. It is a part of the old ghost-lore, that the being talked ?*; 
with by a ghost either finds a man mad or makes him so. If K 

Ithe ghost be subjective, — that is, a mere spectral illusion ' 
Iborn of a diseased or frenzied brain, — then the interview finds 
him mad, the pre-existing madness causing the illusion : but 
if, on the other hand, the ghost be really objective, and duly 
authenticated as such, as it is in the case of Hamlet, then ' 
the interview causes the madness. This old notion is re- 
ferred to by Horatio, when he tries to dissuade Hamlet from / 
following the Ghost, on the ground that the Ghost maw 
depose his " sovereignty of reason, and draw him into mad-? 
ness." At all events, the being thus ghosted was held to be 
no such trifling matter as we are apt to consider it : it was 
accounted a very pokerish, soul-harrowing business ; inso- 
much that a man, after such an experience, could hardly 
continue the same he was before. And so Hamlet, directly: 
after his conversation with the Ghost, on being rejoined byl 
his friends, flies off into a course of behaviour so strange, soj 
wild, so eccentric, as to throw them into amazement. 

3. Hamlet is believed to be really mad by all the other |* 
persons in the play, though they are quite in the dark as to i 

- the cause ; all, I mean, except the King, whose evil con- 
science renders him nervously suspicious that the madness 
is assumed, to cover some hostile design^,. Of course, this so 



INTRODUCTION. II 

general belief arises because he acts precisely as madmen 
often do ; because his conduct displays the proper symptomsT 
and indications of madness : nor does it make at all againsty^ 
this belief, that his behaviour has many contra-indicants. And, 
on this point, Hamlet himself, it appears, agrees with the 
rest : for, in his generous apology, his solemn appeal, to 
Laertes, near the close, — where I cannot think it just to 
pronounce him insincere,^ — he alleges his mental disorder 
as fairly entitling him to the pardon which he asks for the 
offence he has given. And, indeed, it seems to be admitted, ., 
on the other side, that, if Hamlet were actually mad, he/ 
could not enact the madman more perfectly than he does.* 
" If," says Professor Lowell, " Shakespeare himself, without 
going mad, could so observe and remember all the abnormal 
symptoms as to be able to reproduce them in Hamlet, why 
should it be beyond the power of Hamlet to reproduce- them 
in himself? " This means, I take it, that Hamlet counter-^ 
feits madness with an imitation so perfect as to be indistin-( 
guishable from a genuine case. But, if so, then what groundV 
is there for saying it is not a genuine case ? 

4. Many distinguished mem_bers of the medical profession, 
deeply learned in the science, and of approved skill in the 
treatment, of insanity, have^ in our time, made a special 
study of Hamlet's case, as also of Shakespeare's other de- 
lineations of madness ; and — without a single exception, so 
far as I know — have all reached the same conclusion. I 
cannot but think that here their judgment ought to have 
much the same weight which it is allowed to have in actual 
cases. Dr. Conolly of England, referring to Hamlet's first 

soliloquy, — 

O, that this too-too solid flesh would melt, &c., — 

has the following- : " Of his father's ghost he has at this time 



12 HAMLET. 

heard nothing. No thought of feigning melancholy can have 
entered his mind ; but he is even now most heavily shaken 
and discomposed, — indeed, so violently, that his reason, 
although not dethroned, is certainly well-nigh deranged." 
Dr. Isaac Ray, also, formerly of Providence, in a very able 
and well-considered essay on the subject, states it as " a 
scientific fact, that Hamlet's mental condition furnishes in 
abundance the pathological and psychological symptoms of 
insanity in wonderful harmony and consistency." And Dr. 
A. O. Kellogg of Utica fully concurs with Dr. Ray. " There 
are," says he, " cases of melancholic madness, of a delicate 
shade, in which the reasoning faculties, the intellect proper, 
so far from being overcome, or even disordered, are rendered 
more active and vigorous. Such a case Shakespeare has 
given us in the character of Hamlet, with a fidelity to nature 
which continues more and more to excite our wonder and 
astonishment, as our knowledge of this intricate subject 
advances." 

It is to be remembered, however, that a mind diseased is 
by no means necessarily a mind destroyed ; and that it may 
be only a mind with some of its faculties whirled into intem- 
perate and irregular volubility, while others of them are more 
or less palsied. And Dr. Ray justly observes, in regard to 
Hamlet, that madness " is compatible with some of the ripest 
and richest manifestations of intellect." 

Hamlet himself both affirms and denies his madness ; the 
one in his moments of calmness, the other when the fit is 
strong upon him. Nor is there any reason but that in both 
he may be perfectly sincere. It is commonly supposed that 
insane people are always unconscious of their state ; where- 
as there are many cases in which the patient is more or less 
conscious of it. And the degree of consciousness is apt to 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

be inversely as that of tlie disease. So that the being con- 
scious is no sure proof of simulation ; in fact, any one simu- - 
lating would be almost certain to pretend unconsciousness, 
and so betray his falsehood by overacting his part. Thus 
Hamlet, in the first turn of his distemper, when he utters 
such " wild and whirling words," seems to be at least partly 
aware of his state, for he speaks of it. Once only (in the 
scene with his mother) does his paroxysm run to so high a 
pitch that he loses the consciousness of it entirely, insomuch 
that he goes to arguing against it. In this case, at least, his 
mind is completely enthralled to illusions spun out of itself; 
the ghost which he sees and hears being purely subjective, 
as is evident in that his mother neither hears nor sees any 
thing of the kind. Well might she say, " this bodiless crea- 
tion ecstasy is very cunning in." Yet here his intellectual 
faculties are kindled to the most overwhelming eloquence, 
burning both his mother and himself with their preternatural 
light. 

Shakespeare's great, earnest, delicate mind seems to have 
been specially charmed with those forms of mental disease in 
which the intellect is kindled into preternatural illumination 
and expression. We have many instances of this ; as in old 
Timon's terrible eloquence of invective ; in Macbeth's guilt- 
inspired raptures of meditation ; in Lear's he art- withering 
imprecations ; and most of all in Hamlet's profound moral- 
izing, his tempestuous strains of self-reproach, and his over- 
wrought consciousness of " thoughts that wander through 
eternity." I have sometimes thought that an instinct of 
genius may have put the Poet upon these frequent displays 
of mental exorbitancy, because the normal workings of the 
human mind did not afford scope enough for the full dis- 
charge of his own colossal and " thousand-souled " intellec- 
tuality 



14 HAMLET. 

My own idea, then, is, that, in order to make this play em- 
phatically a tragedy of thought, the Poet's method was, to 
conceive a man great, perhaps equally so, in all the elements 
of character, mental, moral, and practical ; and then to place 
him in such circumstances and bring such influences to work 
upon him, that all his greatness should be made to take on 
the form of thought. And with a swift intuitive perception of 
the laws of mind, which the ripest science can hardly over- 
take, he seems to have known just what kind and degree of 
mental disturbance or disease would naturally operate to pro- 
duce such an irregular and exorbitant grandeur of intellectual 
manifestation. 

To return for a moment to the particular question of 
Hamlet's madness. Why should he feign to be mad ? How 
can he further, or hope to further, his end by assuming such 
a part ? It does not help him onward at all ; it rather hin- 
ders him ; the natural effect of his conduct being to arouse 
suspicions in the King's mind, to put him on the alert, and 
to make him guard himself with redoubled vigilance. Let 
us see how it is. 

The Ghost enjoins upon Hamlet two things ; first, " Re- 
venge this foul and most unnatural murder " ; second, 
" Howsoever thou pursuest this act, taint not thy mind." 
Thus time and manner are left to Hamlet's own judgment ; j 
only he must not, he must not corrupt himself with any ' 
wicked or dishonourable course of action. He is solemnly 
warned against pursuing revenge by any methods involving 
self-defilement ; and is to proceed as ever bearing in mind ; 
that I 

Him, only him the shield of Jove defends, j 

Whose means are pure and spotless as his ends.' / 

He might take off Claudius as secretly, and in some such 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

way, as Claudius has taken off his father ; but this would be 
to stain himself with the most abominable guilt and baseness. 
Whatsoever he does, he must be ready to avow it in the face 
of all Denmark, and to stand responsible for it. Come what 
may, he must, he can, use no arts but manly arts. Ob- 
serve, then, what a dreadful dilemma he is placed in : he 
must punish, it is his most sacred duty to punish, a crime ^1 
which it is not possible for him to prove, and which must 
not be punished till it has been proved. His strong, clear 
head instantly takes in the whole truth of his situation ; com- 
prehends at a glance the entire case in all its points and 
bearings. All this may well fill him, as indeed it does, with 
the most excruciating and inevitable, agony ; and, while he 
thus lives in torture, his mighty suffering, even because he is 
so strong, arouses all his faculties, and permits not a particle 
of the intellectual man to be lost. 

Thus, from the time of his interview with the Ghost, all is 
changed with Hamlet ; all, both without and within : hence- 
forth he lives in quite another world, and is himself quite 
another man. All his old aims and aspirations are to be 
sternly renounced and thrust aside : life can have no more 
joys for him : his whole future must be cast in a new shape. 
All the duties upon which his thoughts have been hitherto 
centred are now merged in the one sacred, all-absorbing task 
enjoined upon him as from Heaven itself. 

Now so great, so sudden, so agonizing a change within 
cannot but work some corresponding change without : it will 
naturally and even necessarily register itself in his manner 
and behaviour : while he is so different, how is it possible he 
should appear the same ? And he himself evidently foresees 
that this change will cause him to be regarded as beside 
himself, as out of his right mind ; especially as he cannot 



1 6 HAMLET. 

disclose the reason of it, and must, by all means, keep the 
cause. of that change, or even any whisper of it, from reach- ^ 
ing the King or the Court. A behaviour so strange, so odd, 
so unaccountable, must needs appear to others to have 
sprung from a stroke of madness. All this he clearly fore- 
casts, as indeed he well may. And he desires, apparently, 
that his action may be so construed : he lets his " antic dis- 
position " have free course ; and rather studies than other- 
wise to sustain and strengthen the imputation of madness, by 
his conduct. If any see fit to call this feigning, so be it : the 
question is not worth wrangling about. " To this degree," 
says Professor Werder, "to this degree, which is relatively 
slight, he makes believe, he plays the madman. But, be- 
cause it is essentially his truth, the effect of his real suffering, 
of his shattered being, to which his mind gives vent, so far 
as it can without betraying his secret ; because it is his 
torture, his rage, his cry of woe, his agony, thus outwardly 
expressed ; therefore this playing of his • is not 77ierely feign- , 
ing, and because not merely, therefore not feigning at all, in \ 
the strict sense of the word." 

Hamlet's alleged Defect of 'Will. 

Our hero is not indeed master of the situation ; but he 
understands the situation, which is just what most of his 
critics have not done ; and he is not master of it, simply 
because, as things stand, such mastery is quite beyond the 
power of any man, without help from above. The critics in 
question insist upon it, that the one thing which Hamlet/ 
ought to do, and which he would do, if he had any real 
backbone of executive energy, is, to strike the avenging 
blow with instant dispatch, on the first opportunity. Such 
an opportunity he has, or can make, at almost any time/ 



INTRODUCTION. 1/ 

But to do thus would be both a crime and a blunder, and a 
blunder even more than a crime. How shall he justify such 
a deed to the world ? how vindicate himself from the very 
crime which must allege against another? For, as he can- 
not subpoena the Ghost, the evidence on which he is to act | 
is available only in the court of his own conscience. To 
serve any good end, the deed must so stand to the pubhc 
eye as it does to his own ; else he will be in effect setting an 
example of murder, not of justice. And the crown will 
seem to be his real motive, duty but a pretence. Can a 
man of his "large discourse looking before and after" be 
expected to act thus ? 

We, to be sure, long impatiently to have the crowned 
murderer get his deserts, because the whole truth of his guilt 
is known to us ; but the people of Denmark, Hamlet's social 
and political world, know nothing of it whatever, and can 
never be convinced of it, should he proceed in that way. 
For the Ghost's disclosures were made to his 6ar alone ; 
nobody else heard a word of them. And is it to be sup- 
posed that the Ghost's tale will be received on his sole word ? 
that, too, in behalf of an act by which he has cut away the 
only obstacle between himself and the throne? The very 
alleging of such grounds will be regarded as, if possible, a 
worse crime than that in defence of which they are alleged. 
To the Danish people Hamlet will needs himself appear to 
be just what he charges Claudius with being. Claudius is 
their lawful King ; they are his loyal subjects : they will not 
suffer their chosen ruler to be assassinated with impunity ; 
they will hold themselves bound to wreak upon Hamlet the 
very vengeance which he claims to have wreaked upon him. 
Unless he summons the Ghost into court as a witness, every 
man will set him down either as a raving maniac, to be held 



1 8 HAMLET. 

in chains, or else as a monstrous liar and villain, who has 
murdered at once his uncle, his mother's husband, and his 
King ; and then has trumped up a ghost-story in order at 
the same time to shield himself and to blacken his victim. 

Most assuredly, therefore, the deed which the critics in 
question so loudly call for is the very thing of all others 
which Hamlet ought not to do, which he must not do ; 
which, moreover, he cannot do, for the simple reason that 
he is armed with such manifold strength ; because he is 
strong in reason, in judgment, in right feeling, in conscience, 
in circumspection, in prudence, in self-control, as well as in 
hand, in courage, in passion, in filial reverence, and in a just 
abhorrence of the King's guilt. That he does not deal the 
avenging stroke at once, — than which nothing were easier 
for him, were he not just the strong-willed man that he is ; 
were he a mere roll of explosive, impotent passion, like 
Laertes ; — this the critics aforesaid ascribe, some to consti- 
tutional or habitual procrastination, others to an intellectual 
activity so disproportionate as to quench what little force of 
will he may have. 

Against all this, I make bold to affirm that, if Hamlet has 
any one attribute in larger measure than another, it is that 
very power which these critics accuse him of lacking. They, 
forsooth, see no strength of will in him, because, while he 
has this, he has also the other parts of manhood equally 
strong. Now, the main peculiarity, the most distinctive 
feature of Hamlet's case is, that, from the inevitable, press- 
ing, exigent circumstances of his position, — circumstances 
quite beyond his mastery, quite beyond all mere human 
mastery, — his strength of will has, and must have, its high- 
est exercise, its supreme outcome, in self-restraint and self- 
control ; an indwelling power laying the strong hand of law 



INTRODUCTION. 1 9 

upon him, and causing him to respect the clear, consenting 
counsels of reason, of prudence, of justice, and conscience, 
— counsels which his quick, powerful, well-poised intellect 
perfectly understands. And the act which the critics require 
of him, so far from evincing strength of will, would do just 
the reverse ; it would evince nothing but the impotence of a 
blind, headlong, furious passion, — a transport of rage so 
violent as to take away all that responsibility which everybody 
understands to adhere to a truly voluntary act. In other 
words, it would be an act not so much of executive energy 
as of destructive fury. 

Why Hamlet does not strike the King. 

Hamlet, as before observed, is called upon to revenge a 
crime which is altogether unproved, and which, from the 
nature of the case, is utterly unprovable, except from the 
criminal's own mouth : apart from this source, he has not, 
and cannot get, a particle of evidence available for impress- 
ing upon the world wherein he lives a judicial or even a 
moral conviction of the King's guilt. This is just the cardi- 
nal point in Hamlet's case. So that, matters standing thus, 
killing Claudius would be not so much a punishment of the 
guilty as a murder of the proof. As the only possible evi- 
dence is to come from Claudius himself, he must by all 
means be kept alive, till he can be made his own accuser, 
and a witness against himself; or rather, till either his con- 
science shall drive him to "proclaim his malefactions," or 
else his guilt, to barricade its safety, shall thrust him upon 
other crimes so monstrous and so evident, that all shall see 
him as he is, and acknowledge his punishment just. Mean- 
while, Hamlet must, above all things, refrain from the aveng- 
ing stroke ; must strain his utmost powers, if need be, to that 



20 HAMLET. 

end. That he does thus hold hnnself back from the deed to 
which his burning passion for justice and his righteous thirst 
of vengeance are continually urging him, — in all this I must 
still think he displays an almost superhuman degree of that 
very thing which he is alleged to be without. 

The critics indeed talk just as if it were a matter lying 
solely between Hamlet and Claudius ; just as if the people 
of Denmark had nothing to say, no rights involved, no con- 
cern, in the question. Hamlet does not see it so ; and he 
would discover a pitch of egotism literally inhuman, if* he 
did. Every lover of his kind naturally desires, both in life 
and in death, the good opinion of his kind. This is partly 
because such opinion is an indispensable condition of his 
serving them. And so Hamlet has a just, a benevolent, and 
an honourable concern as to what the world may think of 
him : he craves, as every good man must crave, to have his 
name sweet in the mouths, his memory fragrant and precious 
in the hearts, of his countrymen. How he feels on this 
point, is touchingly shown in his dying moments, when he 
wrenches the cup of poison from Horatio's hand, and appeals 
at once to his strong love and his great sorrow : — 

O God, Horatio ! what a wounded name, 

Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me ! 

If ever thou didst hold me in thy heart, 

Absent thee from felicity awhile, 

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, 

To tell my story. 

Thus the hero's hands are inextricably tied, — tied, not 
through any defect, nor through any excess, in himself; not 
through any infirmity of will or courage or resolution, but 
from the insurmountable difficulties of his situation. It is 
not, it is not, that an intellectual impetuosity, or a redun- 
dancy -of thought, cripples or any way retards his powers of 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

action ; but that the utter impossibiUty of acting, without 
covering himself, in all human account, with the guilt of 
parricide and regicide, prodigiously stimulates and quickens 
his powers of thought, and kee|)s his splendid intellect in an 
incessant transport of exercise. And so the very plan of the 
drama, as I understand it, is to crush all the intellectual fra- 
grance out of him, between a necessity and an impossibility 
of acting. The tremendous problem, the terrible dilemma 
which he has to grapple with, is one that Providence alone 
can solve, as Providence does solve it at the last. 

As if on purpose to warn and guard us against imputing 
Hamlet's delay to the cause alleged, the Poet takes care to 
provide us with ample means for a different judgment ; 
showing him, again and again, to be abundantly energetic 
and prompt in action whenever the way is clear before him. 
So it is in his resolution to meet and address the Ghost ; in 
his breaking away from the hands of friendship when the 
Ghost beckons him to follow ; in his devising and executing 
the scheme for making the King's "occulted guilt unkennel 
itself" ; and especially in his action on shipboard, when he 
sends the King's agents to the fate they have prepared for 
himself. In these cases, as in various others also, he discov- 
ers any thing but a defect of active energy : his mental pow- 
ers range themselves under the leading of a most vigorous 
and steady will. And his conduct appears, moreover, strictly 
normal, and not spasmodic or exceptional ; I mean, it is 
clearly the result of character, not of disease. 

^Why the Poet does not make Hamlet strike. 

Thus much for the reasons of Hamlet's course, as these 
are personal to himself. But the Poet had other reasons of 
his own, indispensable reasons of art, for not making Hamlet 



22 HAMLET. 

act as the critics would have him. Shakespeare portrays 
many great criminals, men, and women too, who for a while 
ride in triumph over virtue wronged, persecuted, crushed. 
And he always brings them to punishment, so far as this 
world can punish them. But he never in a single instance 
does this till their crimes are laid open to the world, so that 
all about them recognise the justice of their fate, and are 
righteously glad at what befalls them. In all this Shake- 
speare is profoundly, religiously true to the essential order 
and law of all right tragic representation. For our moral 
nature, as tuned in sympathy with its Source, reaps a deep, 
solemn, awful joy from such vindications of the Divine law. 

Now the very nature and idea of a proper tragic revenge 
or retribution require that the guilty be not put to death, till 
their guilt has been proved ; and so proved, that the killing 
of them shall be manifestly a righteous act, — shall stand to 
the heart and conscience of mankind as an act of solemn 
and awful justice. To such a revenge, — the only revenge 
that Hamlet can execute or ought to execute ; the only re- 
venge, too, consistent with the genius of the work ; — to such 
a revenge, punishment is necessary ; to punishment, justice 
is necessary ; to justice, the vindication of it in the eyes, not 
merely of the theatre, but of those among whom the action 
takes place. So that, if Shakespeare had made Hamlet kill 
Claudius a moment eariier than he does, he would have vio- 
lated the whole moral law of his art, — that law whose " seat 
is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world." 
And in that case the tragic action, instead of being, to the 
persons concerned, in any proper sense a righteous proceed- 
ure, instead of appeahng to their high and sacred sympathies 
with justice, would be a mere stroke of brutal violence, or, at 
the best, an act of low, savage, personal revenge ; such an 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

act as would inevitably array their sympathies with justice 
against the avenger of crime, and enlist them in behalf of the 
criminal. Thus the proper music of the work would be 
utterly untuned, and for the terrible of tragic art would be 
substituted the horrible of untragic bungling. This were to 
write tragedies for the coarse theatrical sense, for the vulgar 
apprehension of the crowd before the curtain, and not for 
the inner courts of the human soul ! 

Catching the King's Conscience. 

All through the first two Acts of the play, and until late in 
the second scene of the third Act, Hamlet more or less 
doubts the honesty of the Ghost. The old belief in ghosts 
held, among other things, that evil spirits sometimes walked 
abroad, in the likeness of deceased persons, to scare or 
tempt the living. Hamlet apprehends the possibility of its 
being so in this case. He therefore craves some direct and 
decisive confirmation of the Ghost's tale from the King's 
conscience. When the advent of the Players is announced, 
he instantly catches at the chance, thus offered, of testing 
the question, and the possibility, if the Ghost's tale be true, 
of unmasking Claudius, and of forcing or surprising him into 
a confession. Nothing could evince more sagacity in plan- 
ning, or more swiftness in executing, than the action he takes 
in pursuance of this thought : — 

I've heard 
That guilty creatures sitting at a play- 
Have by the very cunning of the scene 
Been struck so to the soul, that presently 
They have proclaim'd their malefactions ; 
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak 
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players 
Play something like the murder of my father 
Before mine uncle : I'll observe his looks ; 



24 HAMLET. 

I'll tent him to the quick : if he but blench, 
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen 
May be the Devil : and the Devil hath power 
T' assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and perhaps, 
Out of my weakness and my melancholy, — 
As he is very potent with such spirits, — 
Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds 
More relative than this : the play's the thing 
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King. 

The scheme, I need not say, succeeds. The King's be- 
haviour in the interlude fully authenticates to Hamlet, per- 
haps also to Horatio, the Ghost's tale. Hamlet now knows 
that Claudius is indeed guilty. And Claudius also, as Ham-^ 
let well understands, knows that he knows it. But the evi- ' 
dence thus caught, however assuring to Hamlet, is nowise 
available for the ends of social or even dramatic justice. 
The Ghost's tale is still just as impossible to be proved to 
the mind and heart of Denmark, as it was before. But this 
advantage has been gained, that Claudius must now do one 
of two things : he must either repent and confess, or else he 
must try to secure himself by further measures : an attitude 
merely passive or defensive will no longer do. If he does 
not repent, there is henceforth a mortal duel between him 
and Hamlet : one, or the other, or both, of them must go 
down. As Hamlet lives but to avenge the murder, he must 
neither die himself nor let the King die, till that work is 
done. Force he has a hand to repel ; fraud he has a mind 
to scent out, to detect, to defeat ; and Claudius must get up 
very early, and be very busy when up, to out-Craft him. 

Hamlet seeing" the King at Prayer. 

The result of the interlude excites Hamlet to the utter- 
most : his faculties, his sensibilities are all wrought up to- 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

their highest tension. All on fire, as he is, he may well 

^' Now could I drink hot blood, 

And do such bitter business as the day 
Would quake to look on. 

In this state of mind he comes upon Claudius while in the 
act of praying. Now he has a fair chance, now, in his white- 
heat of rage, to deal the avenging blow : the self-convicted 
fratricide is there, alone, before him, and is completely at his 
mercy. All through his frame the blood is boiling : still his 
reason tells him that such a hit will be a fatal miss, and will 
irretrievably lose him his cause. His judgment, his pru- 
dence, his self-control are assailed and pressed by such an 
overwhelming stress and energy of passion, that they are all 
but forced to give way : so mighty is the impulse of revenge 
within him, that even his iron strength of will can hardly 
withstand it : and, to brace his judgment against his passion, 
he has to summon up a counterpoising passion in aid of his 
judgment. Even his inexpressible hatred of the King is 
itself called in, to help him through the potent temptation, 
and to keep him from striking the King. This, I take it, is 
the meaning of the dreadful reasons and motives which he 
raves out for sparing Claudius. He will take him while in 
the act of committing such sins as will make sure the perdi- 
tion of his soul. In all this, it seems to me, the providence 
of the drama is using one of Hamlet's maddest fits, to fore- / 
shadow the far deeper, fouler, more damning sins amidst I 
which this execrable wretch ultimately falls. 

Hamlet with his Mother. 

Now that Hamlet is, beyond all peradventure, certified of 
the King's guilt, the next thing for him to do is, to come to 



26 HAMLET. 

a full and perfect understanding with his mother. He must 
see her by herself. He must search her breast to the bot- 
tom, he must " turn her eyes into her very soul," with his 
burning eloquence of indignation, of shame, of reproof, of 
remonstrance, of expostulation : he must arouse the better 
feeHngs of the woman and the mother in her heart, and 
through these, if possible, must redeem her from the blasting 
curse of her present position : above all, he must know from 
her directly, either through her words or her manner, whether 
she was any way conspirant in the murder of his father, 
and must also let her know, with an emphasis not to be re- 
sisted, both his opinion of Claudius and how matters are 
standing between Claudius and himself While he is on the 
point of doing this ; while, with his soul agitated to its inner- 
most depths, he is talking with her ; while he is standing in 
the room and beside the bed in which himself was born, and 
which she has so shockingly dishonoured ; Ppj£nius, on a 
sudden, raises an outcry behind the hangings : Hamlet, sup- 
posing the voice to be the King's, is surprised, snatched, .' 
swept quite away from himself with a whirlwind gust of pas- 
sion : instantly, with the speed of lightning, out leaps his 
sword from the scabbard, as of its own accord, and kills the 
old intriguer. 

Ho"w the Revenge is brought about. 

By this instant lapse of -self-control, Hamlet has lost his 
lead in the game, and given Claudius a great advantage over 
him ; which advantage, however, Claudius will so use as to 
open a clear way for the final triumph of Hamlet's cause, 
though at a fearful cost of life, his own among the rest. 
Claudius is now to assume the offensive, and is so to carry 
it as to achieve his own ruin. For, indeed, his guilt is of 



INTRODUCTION. 27 

such a kind, and is so placed, that it can have its proper ret- 
ribution only through a process of further development. A 
dreadful safety indeed ! But he will prove far unequal to 
the sharp exigency in which he will involve himself. Too 
bad to repent, and too secure in his badness to be reached 
by human avengement, there is, nevertheless, a Hand which 
he cannot elude. That Hand is to work his punishment 
through the springs of his own moral constitution. Hamlet's 
piercing, unsleeping eye, now sharpened to its keenest edge, 
is to be upon him, to penetrate his secretest designs, to trace 
him through his darkest windings, as his evil genius. His 
guilt is to entangle him, by an inward law, in a series of dia- 
bolical machinations ; remorse is to disconcert his judgment, 
and put him to desperate shifts. Thus his first, most secret, 
unprovable crime is to goad him on, from within, to perpe- 
trating other crimes, — crimes so open and manifest as to 
stand in no need of proof ; and he is to go out of the world 
in such a transport of wickedness, lying, poisoning, murder- 
ing, that " his heels shall kick at Heaven," sure enough. 

Such is the stern, awful, inexorable moral logic of this 
mighty drama. And its great wisdom lies in nothing more 
than in the fact, the order, and the method of the hero's being 
made to serve as the unconscious organ or instrument of the 
providential retribution. He himself, indeed, is consciously 
doing the best that can be done in his situation. Mean- 
while the Nemesis of the play is working out the result 
through him, without his knowing it, without his suspecting 
it. Not till the hand of death is already upon him, does it 
become possible for him to strike. Now, at length, the 
seals are opened ; now, for the first time, his hands are 
untied, his passion, his avenging impulse, his will are set 
free. All this he sees instantly just as it is ; instantly, con- 



28 HAMLET. 

sciously, he deals the stroke for which his Divine Helper has 
secretly prepared the way. He himself falls indeed, but 
falls as a pure and spotless victim, to feed the sacrificial fire 
of immortal hopes and aspirations in the human breast ; so 
falls as to leave upon us the hallowed sense, that " flights of 
Angels sing him to his rest." 

Hamlet's Self-Disparagement. 

I must not dismiss the hero without adverting briefly to 
one or two other points. — Many people, I suspect, shape 
their opinions and feelings about Hamlet quite too much 
from what Hamlet, in some of his soliloquies, says against 
himself. In this, they seem to me to take him at his word 
just there where his word is least to be taken. For, surely, 
thus to turn his solitary self- communings, his thinkings-aloud, 
against him, is not fair. Instead of so taking him at his 
word, we ought to see him better than he then sees himself, 
and rather, with our calmer and juster vision, to step between 
him and his morbid self-accusings ; to judge him and to 
maintain his cause upon reasons which he is himself too un- 
selfish, too right-hearted, too noble in mind, to accord their 
due weight in his thinkings. This holds especially in regard to 
his soliloquy beginning, " O, what a rogue and peasant slave 
am I ! " where he surges through a long course of railing 
and storming at himself, bitterly charging himself with faults 
and vices which his whole conduct most certainly and m^ost 
clearly acquits him of. This tempestuous strain of self-abuse 
springs in part from his madness, his disease, which vents 
itself in that way, and puts him thus to quarrelling with him- 
self, because, in the extreme, unrelenting hardness of his case, 
he nevertheless will not, dare not go to accusing or arguing 
against his fate, or fall to quarrelling with what he regards as 
the inevitable orderings of Providence. 



INTRODUCTION. 29 

. The truth is, Hamlet is suffering dreadfully : shame, indig- 
nation, grief, sympathy with his father's purgatorial pains, 
detestation, horror, at the triumphant murderer, a consuming, 
holy thirst of vengeance, impossible, as things stand, to be 
attained, — all these are crowding and pressing his soul 
together ; and his intolerable anguish, instead of easing itself 
by blaming, by resenting, by deploring his miserable lot, 
seeks such relief as it can by arraigning himself before him- 
self, as desemng a lot far worse. He thus revenges upon 
himself, as it were, the inexorable cruelty of his position. 

All this is what some of the Poet's critics cannot or will 
not see ; and Hamlet appears to them cold, hard-hearted, 
indifferent, because they are themselves either so hard or so 
locked up in their self-applauding critical perspicacity as to 
have no ear, no sense for his mute agony. And so they take 
him at his word ! not perceiving that what he says to himself 
against himself are just the things he would be sure not to 
say, if they were really true ; while the things which he does 
not say are so true, and so unutterably crushing in their truth, 
that he i7iust be saying something else. Because he " has 
that within which passeth show," therefore what he does show 
is taken as a just index and exponent of what he has within. 

Pathos of Hamlet's Situation. 

This brings me to one of the most peculiar and most 
interesting features in the delineation of Hamlet. — In his 
intellectual powers, attainments, resources, Hamlet is highly 
self-conscious, though not at all touched with conceit. In 
his moral instincts, sentiments, principles, in his beautiful 
train of manly virtues, his courage, his honour, his reverence, 
his tenderness, his sense of truth and right, his human-heart- 
edness, his generosity, his self-restraint, his self-sacrifice, — • 



30 HAMLET. 

in these he is nobly unconscious ; and rather shows his full, 
'deep possession of them by a modest sense, or fear, of his 
being deficient in them : for these things are apt to be most 
on the tongue where they are least in the heart. Hence, in 
part, the singular vein of pathos that permeates the delinea- 
tion. That pathos is altogether undemonstrative, silent ; a 
deep undercurrent, hardly ever rising to the surface, so as 
to be directly visible, but kept down by its own weight. 
Hamlet, as I said before, suffers, suffers dreadfully ; but he 
makes no sign, at least none when his suffering is greatest ; 
or, if any at all, so very slight, as to be scarce heard amidst 
the louder noises of the play ; as in what he says to Horatio, 
near the close : " Thou wouldst not think how ill all's here 
about my heart ; but it is no matter : it is but foolery ; but 
it is such a kind of gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a 
woman." Thus his suffering is not made audible to the 
sense : it is speechless, indeed unspeakable, and left for the 
inner eye, the intelligent heart, the sympathizing magnet 
within, to iiifer. 

Such is the unspoken pathos of Hamlet's situation, — a 
pathos so deep, so pure, so refined, so soul-moving, if we 
have but the eye to see it, that I know not where else we 
shall find its like. Let us see, for a moment, to recur to a 
topic already discussed, — let us see how it is with him. If 
he could but forget the real nature of his task ; if he could 
give free course to his mighty impulse of justice ; then he 
might indeed have at least a respite to the torture that is 
wringing him. But, because his reason is so strong as to 
stay his hand, therefore he has to suffer such pain, — the 
pain of a most powerful will engaged in a mortal struggle 
against the insurgent forces of passion goading him onward. 
To quote again from Professor Werder : " To smite down 



INTRODUCTION. 3 1 

the King, to sacrifice his own life by the blow, in order to 
be quit of his task at once, that were the easiest, the happiest 
thing for him ; but he wills to fulfill it, to fulfill it faithfully. 
What he rails at as 'pigeon-livered,' when the mortal nature, 
impatient of pain, weary of suffering, cries out in him, — all 
this is enduring courage, the courage of reason, springing 
from reverence for a holy duty, and from devotion thereto." 

But, harsh and bitter as is his lot, Hamlet never complains 
of it, hardly breathes an audible sigh over it : nay, he will 
not, if he can help it, let either himself or others see it : 
heroically he bears it, heroically he hides it. Of self-pity, of 
self-compassion, he discovers not the slightest symptom; 
and, so far from saying or doing any thing to stir pity or 
compassion in others, he is ever trying, though trying spon- 
taneously and unconsciously, to disguise his inward state 
both from others and from himself; — from himself in high 
strains of self-accusation ; from his true friends in smiles of 
benevolence, or in fine play of intellect ; from his foes and 
his false friends in caustic, frolicsome banter, and in pointed, f 
stinging remonstrance or reproofl Even when his anguish is: 
shrieking within him, he knits his lips down tight over it, and 
strangles the utterance. For, indeed, to his mind, it is not 
of the slightest consequence how much he suffers in this 
world, so he does his duty, his whole duty, and nothing but 
that ; and he is so all-intent upon that as to have no time, 
no heart, for self-commiseration. Now this utter oblivion of 
self in his vast, incommunicable sorrow is to me just the 
most pathetic thing in Shakespeare ; though, to be sure, the 
pathos is much less pronounced than in other cases : but I 
deem it all the better for that. 

It is partly to reheve or divert off his sense of woe that his 
mind is so continually " voyaging through strange seas of 



32 HAMLET. 

thought " ; sometimes in outpourings of statesman-like wis- 
dom, such as would add to the fame of a Burke or a Web- 
ster j sometimes in profound moralizings on life and death, 
on duty and immortality, such as would give a richer bloom 
to the laurels of a Cicero, a Marcus Aurelius, a Jeremy Tay- 
lor, or a Sir Thomas Browne ; sometimes in well-seasoned 
discourse on the player's art and on the right virtues of liter- 
ary style, such as " shames the schools " ; now in flashes of 
wit more than Attic ; now in jets of humour the freshest, the 
raciest, the mellowest, the most suggestive, ever delivered. 

All this, to be sure, Hamlet does not himself say ; no ! 
nor does the Poet say it for him in words ; but the Poet says 
it through the ineffable dramatic logic of the play, — says it 
by a speaking silence, a mute eloquence, far more powerful 
and penetrating than words. It is the " austere and solid 
sweetness " of a great, strong, dehcate soul perfectly self- 
contained. 

General Remarks on Hamlet. 

Intellectually, and morally too, Hamlet is represented as, 
in the language of our time, much in advance of his age ; 
his mind casting far onwards to an era of purer, richer, 
brighter civilization. He conceives a mould of statesman- 
ship, a style of public order, and a tone of social converse, 
such as the time affords him no examples of. The coarse 
and brutal manners of Ris nation, infecting even the Court, 
he both scorns and deplores, and this on grounds of taste, 
of policy, of honour, and of right. And the effects which 
such things have on national character and well-being are 
discoursed by him with rare discernment and reach of 
thought. His mind is indeed penetrated with the best effi- 
cacies of Christian morality and refinement. 



INTRODUCTION. 33 

In Shakespeare's time the Drama was an intense national 
passion, all grades of the English people, from the throne 
downwards, taking a lively interest in it, and some of the 
finest gentlemen and choicest spirits of the age lending it 
their hearty support, apparently regarding it as a powerful 
engine of public enlightenment and progress : all which was 
in fact one cause why the Drama came to such a glorious 
efflorescence in that age. It was therefore in strict keeping 
with the best thoughts of the time that the Poet made his 
favorite intellectual hero, prince though he be, deeply versed 
in the theory of the dramatic art, and much concerned to 
have the representatives of it well used ; as when he tells 
Polonius, " After your death you were better have a bad epi- 
taph, than their ill report while you live." Hamlet's idea 
seems to be, " Let me have the making of a nation's plays, 
and I care little who makes its laws." His mind was indeed 
meant to be large enough, and his taste cathoHc enough, to 
include all generous discipUnes and liberal preparations in 
its scope ; and Shakespeare evidently thought no scorn to 
endow such a man with his own exquisite science in the 
walk which his " sweet and cunning hand " was to render so 

illustrious. 

Laertes. 

Laertes makes a very peculiar and most emphatic contrast 
to Hamlet. We cannot exactly call Laertes a noble charac- 
ter, yet he has noble streaks in him. The respect in which 
he holds his father, and the entire and unreserved affection 
he bears his sister, set him well in our esteem as a son and 
a brother : beyond these he can hardly be said to show any 
sentiments or principles worthy of regard. He takes as 
ardently to the gayeties of the French capital as Hamlet 
does to the studious walks and shades of Wittenberg. 



34 HAMLET. 

Though incapable of any thing so serious as friendship, he 
is nevertheless a highly companionable fellow, at least among 
those of like resort. He is never pestered at all with moral 
scruples : life has no dark and difficult problems to him : he 
has no philosophy at all, does not even know what the word 
means : truth, as such, is neither beautiful nor venerable in 
his sight : in his heat and stress of destructive impulse, he 
does not see far enough to apprehend any causes for delib- 
eration or delay. In regard to the death of his father, he 
snatches eagerly at the conclusion shaped for him by the 
King, without pausing to consider the grounds of it, or to 
weigh the merits of the case, because it offers a speedy 
chance of discharging his revenge ; and he is reckless ahke 
of means and of consequences, in fact cares nothing for 
others or even for himself, here or hereafter, so he may 
quickly ease his breast of the mad rapture with which it is 
panting. He has a burning resentment of personal wrongs, 
real or supposed, but no proper sense of justice ; indeed, he 
can nowise enter into any question of so grave a nature as 
that : hence in the exigency that overtakes him, " wild 
sword-law " becomes at once his religion. 

The blame of the treacherous plot for assassinating Ham- 
let, on the express ground of his " being remiss, most gen- 
erous, and free from all contriving," properly belongs to the 
King : but the further infamy of anointing his sword in order 
to clinch the nail of his purpose would go hard with Laertes, 
but that his trance of passion at Opheha's madness and death 
in a great measure, if not entirely, takes away his responsi- 
bility. In his transport of grief and rage he is as much 
beside himself as Hamlet is in his wildest paroxysms of dis- 
order ; and the most suggestive point of contrast between 
them is in reference to the opposite manner in which the 



INTRODUCTION. 35 

moral character of each transpires under the eclipse of rea- 
son. Observe, also, how the two men differ in their ends : 
Laertes dies repenting of the base and hateful wrong he has 
done to Hamlet, and begging his forgiveness ; Hamlet dies 
pitying Laertes, and — forgiving him ! 

The King. 

Enough, perhaps, has already been said of Claudius ; but 
there is one further point in his character, so suggestive of 
wholesome thought, that it ought to receive some passing 
notice. — The words " all may be well," with which he pro- 
logues his act of devotion, are very significant, as showing 
that his prayer is an attempt to make religion a substitute 
for duty. As often -happens in real life, he betakes himself 
to a sentimental repentance as absolving him from " doing 
works meet for repentance." For who has not seen men 
resorting to very emphatic exercises of religion, as virtually 
dispensing with the law of good and pious works ? It- is ob- 
servable that the King's fit of devotion operates to ease him 
through his course of crime, instead of deterring him from 
it. Such are the subtle tricks men practice on themselves, 
to soothe the pangs of guilt without amendment of life. The 
King goes from his closet to plot further crimes ! Thus his 
prayer is " like a spendthrift sigh that hurts by easing " ; 
that is to say, he endeavours to satisfy or appease his con- 
science with a falsetto cry of penitence. Strange it should 
be so, but so it is ! 

The Ghost. 

The Ghost is a powerful element in this great drama, 
shedding into it a peculiar and preternatural grandeur ; but 
that power acts through the finest organs of the soul, work- 



^6 HAMLET. 

ing so deeply on the moral and imaginative forces, that the 
coarse arts of criticism can do but little with it. What an 
air of dread expectancy waits upon the coming and the mo- 
tions of that awful shade ! How grave and earnest, yet how 
calm and composed its speech ! as if it came indeed from 
the other world, and brought the lessons of that world in 
its mouth. The stately walk, the solemn, slowly- measured 
words, the unearthly cast and temper of the discourse, are 
all ghost-like. The popular currency of many of the Ghost's 
sayings shows how profoundly they sink into our souls, and 
what a weight of ethical meaning attaches to them. Ob- 
serve, too, how choicely Horatio hits the key-note of the 
part, and attempers us to its influences : — 

What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night, 
Together with that fair and warhke form 
In which the majesty of bm-ied Denmark 
Did sometime march ? 

But indeed the whole matter preparatory to the Ghost's in- 
terview with Hamlet, its first appearance on the scene, its 
sad and silent steps, its fading at the crowing of the cock, 
and the subdued reflections that follow, ending with the 
speech. 

But look, the Morn, in russet mantle clad, 
Walks o'er the dew of yond high eastern hill ; 

all this is managed with consummate skill. 

Horatio. 

Horatio is one of the very noblest and most beautiful of 
Shakespeare's male characters : there is not a single loose 
stitch in his make-up : he is at all times superbly self-con- 
tained : he feels deeply, but never gushes nor runs over : as 
true as a diamond, as modest as a virgin^ and utterly unself- 



INTRODUCTION. 37 

ish ; a most manly soul, full alike of strength, tenderness, 
and solidity. But he moves so quietly in the drama, that 
his rare traits of character have received scant justice. 
Much of the best spirit and efficacy of the scenes is owing 
to his presence. He is the medium whereby some of the 
hero's finest and noblest qualities are conveyed to us ; yet 
himself so clear and transparent, that he scarcely catches 
the attention. The great charm of his unselfishness is, that 
he seems not to be himself in the least aware of it ; " as one, 
in s.uffering all, that suffers nothing." His mild scepticism 
" touching the dreaded sight twice seen of us," is exceed- 
ingly graceful and scholarly. And, indeed, all that comes 
from him marks the presence of a calm, clear head keep- 
ing touch and time perfectly with a good heart. 

Polonius. 

Pqlonius is Shakespeare's version, sharply individualized, 
of a politician somewhat past his faculties ; shrewd, careful, 
conceited, meddlesome, and pedantic. Hamlet does him 
some injustice ; partly as thinking that the old man has 
wantonly robbed him of his heart's best object, and not 
making due allowance, as indeed lovers seldom do in such 
cases, for the honest though perhaps erring solicitude of a 
father's love. Therewithal he looks upon him as a supple 
time-server and ducking observant, which indeed he is, of 
whoever chances to be in power, ever ready to " crook the 
pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawn- 
ing." As such he of course has the utmost contempt for 
him ; which contempt his disease lets loose from the bands 
of respect, while his intellect engineers it' with the , greatest 
fluency and point. 
j Polonius has his mind richly stored with prudential and 



38 HAMLET. 

politic wisdom ; which however shows somewhat absurdly in 
him, because, to use a figure of Coleridge's, it is like a light 
in the stern of a ship, that illumines only that part of the 
course already left behind. For, as Dr. Johnson aptly re- 
marks, he is " knowing in retrospect, and ignorant in fore- 
sight." A man of one method, political engineering; with 
his fingers ever itching to work the machine of policy ; and 
with little perception of times and occasions ; he is called to 
act where such arts and methods are peculiarly unfitting, 
and therefore he overreaches himself. 

To such a mind the hero's character can hardly be other 
than an inscrutable enigma. It takes a whole man to under- 
stand Hamlet, and Polonius is but the attic storey of a man ! 
Assuming Hamlet to be thus and so, Polonius reasons and 
acts just right in regard to him ; but the fact is, he cannot 
see him ; and so, his premises being all wrong, the very just- 
ness of his reasoning only carries the further astray. But, in 
the directions he gives his man Reynaldo for angling out the 
truth about his absent son, the old politician is perfectly at 
home ; and his mind seems to revel in the mysteries of wire- 
pulling and trap-setting. He understands, no man better, 
" how your bait of falsehood takes the carp of truth," But 
to such modes of dealing Hamlet is quite impracticable. 
And he takes a mad pleasure in fooling and plaguing the 
old fox ! 

A chronic fanaticism of intrigue having blunted in Polo- 
nius the powers of special insight and discernment in what 
is before him, he therefore perceives not the unfitness of his 
old methods to the new exigency ; while his long experience 
of success in "hunting the trail of policy" makes him feel 
quite sure of succeeding now. To quote Dr. Johnson again, 
" such a man is positive and confident, because he knows 



INTRODUCTION. 39 

that his mind was once strong, but knows not that it has 
become weak." Antiquated managers, indeed, like Polo- 
nius, seldom have much strength but as they fall back upon 
the resotirces of memory : out of these, the ashes, so to 
speak, of extinct faculties, they may appear wise long after 
the springs of real wisdom are dried up within them ; as a 
man who has lost his sight may seem to distinguish colours, 
provided he does not speak of the particular colours before 
him. 

I Polonius has great knowledge of the world ; though even 
here his mind has come to rest mainly in generalities. Ac- 
cordingly the pithy maxims he gives Laertes, to " character 
in his memory," are capital in their way; nothing could be 
better : yet they are but the well-seasoned fruits of general 
experience and reflection ; and there is no apparent reason 
why he should speak them at that time, except that they 
were strong in his mind. One would suppose that in such 
an act of paternal blessing he would try to breathe some fire 
of noble sentiment into his son j whereas he thinks of noth- 
ing higher than cold precepts of worldly prudence ; which 
seem indeed to be the essence of religion with him. And 
he imagines that such thoughts will be a sufficient break- 
water against the passions of youth ! 

Note, also, what a precious, characteristic specimen of 
unconscious grannyism he blunders out when he undertakes 
TO explain "the very cause of Hamlet's lunacy." Here, 
with his hands brimfull of the most serious business, he is 
pleased, notwithstanding, to spend the time in dallying with 
artful quirks of thought and speech, — a piece of pedantry 
and impertinence which has often reminded me of the man 
who " could speak no sense in several languages." <S In this 
instance, again, he shows a good memory of what he had 



40 HAMLET. 

learned at the university; but he manifestly has no live 
organs to perceive the rights of the occasion. Such is the 
natural effect of " dotage encroaching upon wisdom." 

Ophelia. 

The pathetic sweetness of Ophelia " divided from herself 
and her fair judgment " touches the soul with surpassing 
delicacy. But the touch is full of power withal. Her mad- 
ness is totally different from Hamlet's ; but the delineation 
of it, so science assures us, is no less true to nature, and 
evinces an insight no less profound of pathological laws. 
The violence her feelings suffered in the constrained repulse 
of her lover after she had " suck'd the honey of his music 
vows " ; her tender grief at his subsequent condition, which 
is all the greater that she thinks herself the cause of it ; the 
shock of her father's sudden and violent death, — the father 
whom she loves with such religious entireness, — and this by 
the hand of that same lover, and in consequence of the 
madness into which, as she believes, her own action has cast 
him; — all these causes join in producing her lapse of 
reason, and all reappear more or less in what comes from 
her afterwards. Her insanity is complete, unconscious, and 
such as, it is said, never ends but with the sufferer's death. 
There is no method in it : she is like one walking and talk- 
ing in her sleep ; her mind still busy, but its sources of ac- 
tivity all within ; literally "incapable of her own distress." 
The verses she sings are fragments of old ballads which she 
had heard in her childhood, when she understood not the 
meaning of them, and which had faded from her memory, 
but are now revived just enough for her inward eye to catch 
the words. The immodesty of some of them is surpassingly 
touching, because it tells us, as nothing else could, that she 



INTRODUCTION. 41 

is utterly unconscious of what she is saying. The fine 
threads of association by which they are now brought to her 
mind may be felt, but cannot be described. And the sweet, 
guileless, gentle spirit of the dear girl casts a tender sanctity 
over the whole expression. 

This delineation shows the Poet under an aspect very pe- 
culiar and well worth the noting. His genius here appears 
literally angelic in its steps and tones of purity and rever- 
ence and human-heartedness. He gives just enough to start 
our tenderest sympathies, but nothing to entertain a prurient 
curiosity ; barely hinting the nature of the disease, and then 
drawing the veil of silence over it, like some protecting 
spirit of humanity, sent to guard its sacredest possessions 
from unholy eyes and irreverent hands. In all this we have 
what may be fitly termed the Shakespeare of Shakespeare ; 
— I mean his ineffable delicacy and cleanness of moral per- 
ception, and his angelic awe of moral beauty. 

The central idea or formal cause of Ophelia's character 
stands in perfect simplicity, — the pure whiteness of perfect 
truth. This is her wisdom, — the wisdom, not of reflection, 
but of instinctive reason, — a spontaneous beating of her 
heart in unison with the soul of Nature, and all the better 
for being so. And her free docility to paternal counsel and 
full submission to paternal command are in no sort the re- 
sult of weakness ; filial duty and filial affection being the 
native element of her young life ; so that she instinctively 
shrinks from forsaking that element, and indeed never thinks 
of doing so, any more than she does of disowning the laws 
of gravity and respiration. 

Ophelia's situation much resembles Imogen's ; their char- 
acters are in marked contrast. Both appear amidst the 
corruptions of a wicked court, and both pass through them 



42 HAMLET. 

unhurt ; the one because she knows not of them, the other 
because she both knows and hates them. And the reason 
why Opheha knows not of them is because her simplicity of 
character makes her susceptive only of that which is simple. 

The space Ophelia fills in the reader's thoughts is strangely 
disproportionate to that which she fills in the play. Her very 
silence utters her ; unseen, she is missed, and so thought of 
the more ; in her absence she is virtually present in what 
others bring from her. Whatever grace comes from Polo- 
nius and the Queen is of her inspiring : Laertes is scarce 
regarded but as he loves his sister : of Hamlet's soul, too, 
she is the sunrise and the morning hymn. The soul of in- 
nocence and gentleness, virtue radiates from her insensibly, 
as fragrance is exhaled from flowers. It is in such forms 
that Heaven most frequently visits us. 

Ophelia's insanity is one of those mysterious visitings over 
which we can only brood in dumb compassion ; which 
Heaven alone has a heart adequately to pity, and a hand 
effectually to heal. Its pathos were too much to be borne, 
but for the incense that rises from her crushed spirit as she 
turns " thought and affliction, passion. Hell itself to favour 
and to prettiness." — Of her death what shall be said ? The 
" snatches of old tunes " with which she ch aunts, as it were, 
her own burial service, are like smiles gushing from the 
heart of woe. I must leave her with the words of Hazlitt : 
"■ O rose of May ! O flower too soon faded ! Her love, her 
madness, her death, are described with the truest touches 
of tenderness and pathos. It is a character which nobody 
but Shakespeare could have drawn, and to the conception 
of which there is not the smallest approach, except in some 
of the old romantic ballads." 



HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK. 



PEI^SON'S REPRESENTED, 



Claudius, King of Denmark. 
Hamlet, his Nephew, Son of the 

former King. 
POLONIUS, Lord Chamberlain. 
Horatio, Friend to Hamlet. 
Laertes, Son of Poloniua. 

VOLTIMAND, 



Cornelius, 
rosencrantz, 
Guildenstern, 
Osric, a Courtier. 
Another Courtier. 
A Priest. 



. Courtiers. 



;:■} 



Ofificers. 



Marcellus, 
Bernardo, 
Francisco, a Soldier. 
Reynaldo, Servant to Polonius. 
A Captain. Ambassadors. 
The Ghost of Hamlet's Father. 
Fortinbras, Prince of Norway. 
Two Grave-diggers. 

Gertrude, Mother of Hamlet, and 

Queen. 
Ophelia, Daughter of Polonius. 



Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Players, Sailors, Messengers, and 
Attendants. Scene, Elsinore. 



ACT I. 

Scene I. — Elsinore. A Platform before the Castle, 

Francisco at his Post. Enter to him Bernardo. 

Bern. Who's there ? 

Fran. Nay, answer me : ^ stand, and unfold yourself. 

Beim. Long live the King ! 

Fran. Bernardo ? 

1 Answer me, as I have the right to challenge you. Bernardo then gives 
in answer the watchword, " Long hve the King ! " 

45 



46 HAMLET, ACT I. 

fPern. He. 

Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour. 

Bern. 'Tis now struck twelve ; get thee to bed, Francisco. 

Fran. For this relief much thanks : 'tis bitter cold, 
And I am sick at heart. 

Bern. Have you had quiet guard ? 

Fran. Not a mouse stirring. 

Bern. Well, good night. 
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, 
The rivals^ of my watch, bid them make haste. 

Fran. I think I hear them. — Stand, ho ! Who is there ? 

Enter Horatio and Marcellus. 

Hora. Friends to this ground. 

Marc. And liegemen to the Dane. 

Fran. Give you good night.^ 

Marc. O, farewell, honest soldier : 

Who hath relieved you ? 

Fran. Bernardo has my place. 

Give you good night. \Exit. 

Marc. Holla ! Bernardo ! 

Bern. Say, — 

What, is Horatio there ? 

Hora. A piece of him. 

• Bejii. Welcome, Horatio ; welcome, good Marcellus. 

2 Rivals are associates or partners. A brook, rivulet, or river, rivtis, 
being a natural boundary between different proprietors, was owned by them 
in common ; that is, they were partners in the right and use of it. From the 
strifes thus engendered, the partners came to be contenders : hence the ordi- 
nary sense of rival. 

® This salutation is an abbreviated form of, " May God give you a good 
night " ; which has been still further abbreviated in the phrase, " Good 
night." 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 47 

Nora. What, has this thing ^ appear'd again to-night ? 

Bei'ii. I have seen nothing. 

Marc. Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy, 
And will not let belief take hold of him 
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us : 
Therefore I have intreated him along 
With us to watch the minutes of this night, 
That, if again this apparition come. 
He may approve our eyes,^ and speak to it. 

Hora. Tush, tush, 'twill not appear. 

Bern. Sit down awhile j 

And let us once again assail your ears. 
That are so fortified against our story, 
What^ we two nights have seen. 

Hora. Well, sit we down, 

And let us hear Bernardo speak of this. 

Bern. Last night of all, 
When yond same star that's westward from the pole^ 
Had made his ^ course t' illume that part of heaven 

4 There is a temperate scepticism, well befitting a scholar, in Horatio's 
" has this thing appeared again to-night." Thing is the most general and 
indefinite substantive in the language. Observe the gradual approach to 
what is more and more definite. " Dreaded sight " cuts off a large part of 
the indefiniteness, and " this apparition " is a further advance to the particular. 
The matter is aptly ordered for what Coleridge calls " credibilizing effect." 

^ That is, make good our vision, or prove our eyes to be true. Approve 
was often thus used in the sense of confirm. 

6 " With an account of what," is the meaning ; the language being ellip- 
tical. 

7 Of course \\\e. polar sfa?', or north star, is meant, which appears to stand 
still, while the other stars in its neighbourhood seem to revolve around it. 

8 His was continually used for its in Shakespeare's time, the latter not 
being then an accepted word, though it was just creeping into use. The 
English Bible abounds in instances oi his so used; as, "the fruit-tree yield- 
ing fruit after his kind " ; and, " giveth to every seed his own body." 



48 HAMLET, ACT I. 

Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself. 
The bell then beating one, — 

Enter the Ghost. 

Marc. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again ! 

Bern. In the same figure, like the King that's dead. 

Marc. Thou art a scholar ; speak to it, Horatio. ^ 

Bern. Looks it not like the King ? mark it, Horatio. 

Hora. Most like : it harrows me ^^ with fear and wonder. 

Bern. It would ^^ be spoke to. 

Marc. Question it, Horatio. 

Hora. What art thou that usurp'st this time of night, 
Together with that fair and warlike form 
In which the Majesty of buried Denmark 
Did sometimes ^^ march ? by Heaven I charge thee, speak ! 

Marc. It is offended. 

Bern. See, it stalks away ! 

Hora. Stay ! speak, speak ! I charge thee, speak ! 

\_Exit Ghost. 

Marc. 'Tis gone, and will not answer. 

Bern. How now, Horatio ! you tremble and look pale : 
Is not this something more than fantasy ? 
What think you on't ? 

9 It was believed that a supernatural being could only be spoken to with 
effect by persons of learning; exorcisms being usually practiced by the 
clergy in Latin. So in The Night Walker of Beaumont and Fletcher : 
" Let's call the butler up, for he speaks Latin, and that will daunt the Devil." 

1" To harrow is to distress, to vex, to disturb. To harry and to harass have 
the same origin. Milton has the word in Comus: " Amazed I stood har- 
rowd with grief and fear." 

11 Would and should were often used indiscriminately. I am not clear, 
however, whether the meaning here is, " It wants to be spoke to," or " It ought 
to be spoke to." Perhaps both. 

12 Sometimes and sometime were used indiscriminately, and often, as here, 
in the sense oi formerly. 



SCENE I- PRINCE OF DENMARK. 49 

Hora. Before my God, I might not this beheve 
Without the sensible and true avouch 
Of mine own eyes. 

Marc. Is it not hke the King? 

Hora. As thou art to thyself : 
Such was the very armour he had on 
When he th' ambitious Norway combated ; 
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle, 
He smote the sledded Polacks i^ on the ice. 
'Tis strange. 

Marc. Thus twice before, and jump^^ at this dead hour, 
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch. 

Hora. In what particular thought to work I know not ; 
But, in the gross and scope of my opinion. 
This bodes some strange eruption to our State.^^ 

Marc. Good now,!^ sit down, and tell me, he that knows, 
Why this same strict and most observant watch 
So nightly toils the subject ^^ of the land. 
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon, 
And foreign mart for implements of war j 

13 Polacks was used for Polanders in Shakespeare's time. Sledded is 
sledged; on a sled or sleigh. — Pa7ie^ in the preceding line, is the same as 
parley. 

'^'^Jump and just were synonymous in the time of Shakespeare. So in 
Chapman's May Day, 161 1 : " Your appointment was Jimipe at three with 
me." 

15 Horatio means that, in -a general interpretation of the matter, this fore- 
shadows some great evil or disaster to the State ; though he cannot con- 
ceive in what particular shape the evil is to come. 

16 " Good now " was often used precisely as the phrase " well now." 
Also, good for well. So in The Tev7pest, i. i : " Good, speak to the mari- 
ners." And again : " Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard." 

1^ The Poet sometimes uses an adjective with the sense of the plural 
substantive ; as here subject for subjects. — Toils is here a transitive verb. — 
Mart, in the next line but one, is trade. 



50 HAMLET, ACT I. 

Why such impress ^^ of shipwrights, whose sore task 
Does not divide the Sunday from the week : 
What might be toward/^ that this sweaty haste 
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day? 
Who is't that can inform me ? 

Hora. That can I ; 

At least, the whisper goes so.^^ Our last King, 
Whose image even but now appear'd to us, 
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway, 
Thereto prick'd on^^ by a most emulate pride, 
Dared to the combat ; in which our valiant Hamlet — 
For so this side of our known world esteem'd him — 
Did slay this Fortinbras ; who, by a seal'd compact, 
Well ratified by law and heraldry,^^ 
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands 
Which he stood seized of,^^ to the conqueror : 
Against the which a moiety competent ^^ 

18 Impress here means pressing or forcing of men into the service. — Di- 
vide, next line, is distinguish. Of course, week is put for week-days. 

19 Toward, here, is at hand, or forthcoming. Often so used. 

20 That is, " so as I am going to tell you." 

21 Prick'd on refers to Fortinbras ; the sense being, " by Fortinbras, who 
was prick'd on thereto." 

22 " Law a7id heraldry " is the same as " the law of heraldry " ; what is 
sometimes called "the code of honour." Private duels were conducted 
according to an established code, and heralds had full authority in the mat- 
ter. The Poet has many like expressions. So in The Merchant, v. i : "I 
was beset with shame and courtesy " ; which means " with the shame of dis- 
courtesy y Also in King Lear, i. 2 : " This policy a7id revere7tce ofa.ge. makes 
the world bitter," &c. ; meaning " This policy, or practice, of reverencing 
age," &c. 

23 This is the old legal phrase, still in use, for held possession of, or was 
the rightfiil owner of 

24 Moiety competent is equivalent portion. The proper meaning of moiety 
is half; so that the sense here is, half of the entire value put in pledge on 
both sides. — Gaged is pledged. 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 5 1 

Was gaged by our King ; which had return'd 

To the inheritance of Fortinbras, 

Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same co-mart ^s 

And carriage of the article design'd,26 

His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras, 

Of unimproved mettle ^^ hot and full, 

Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there 

Shark'd up 28 a Kst of lawless resolutes, 

For food and diet, to some enterprise 

That hath a stomach in't ;29 which is no other — 

As it doth well appear unto our State — 

But to recover of us, by strong hand 

And terms compulsative, those foresaid lands 

So by his father lost : and this, I take it, 

Is the main motive of our preparations, 

The source of this our watch, and the chief head 

Of this post-haste and romage ^^ in the land. 

25 Co-mart is jo'mt-bargain or mutual agreement; the same as compacts 
little before. So, in the preceding speech, mart for trade, purchase, or bar- 
gain. 

26 Designed in the sense of the L.atin designatus ; marked out or drawn 
up. Carriage is pmport or drift. 

'^'Mettle, in Shakespeare, is spirit, temper, disposition. — Unimproved is 
commonly explained unimpeached, unquestioned ; and so, it appears, the 
word was sometimes used. But it may here mean rude, wild, uncultured; 
since Fortinbras, as " like will to like," may well be supposed of a somewhat 
lawless spirit. 

28 Shark'd up is snapped tip, or raked together; the idea being, that For- 
tinbras has gathered eagerly, wherever he could, a band of desperadoes, 
hard cases, or roughs, who were up to any thing bold and adventurous, and 
required no pay but their keep. 

29 Stoinach was often used in the sense of courage, or appetite for danger 
or for fighting. So in Julius Ccesar, v. i ; " If you dare fight to-day, come 
to the field; if not, when you have stomachs." 

3" Romage, now spelt rummage, is used for ransacking, or making a 
thorough search. 



52 HAMLET, ACT I, 

Bern. I think it be no other but e'en so. 
Well may it sort^i that this portentous figure 
Comes armed through our watch, so like the King 
That was and is the question of these wars. 

Hora. A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye. 
In the most high and palmy ^^ state of Rome, 
A httle ere the mightiest Julius fell, 
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead 
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets : 
So,33 stars with trains of fire ; and dews of blood ; 
Disasters in the Sun ; and the moist star,^^^ 
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands, 
Was sick almost to doomsday ^^ with eclipse : 
And even the like precurse of fierce ^^ events, 
As harbingers preceding still the fates 
And prologue to the omen^'^ coming on, 
Have Heaven and Earth together demonstrated 
Unto our climature ^^ and countrymen. — 

31 Sort, probably, for happen, or fall out. Often so. The word was 
sometimes used for suit, fit, or agree ; which may be the sense here. 

32 Palmy is victorious ; the palm being the old badge of victory. 

33 So is here equivalent, apparently, to in like sort, or like manner, and 
naturally draws in the sense of there were ; unless we choose to regard these 
words as understood. See Critical Notes. 

34 " The moist star " is the Moon ; so called, no doubt, either from the 
dews that attend her shining, or from her connection with the tides. — " Dis- 
asters in the Sun " is astrological, referring to the calamities supposed to be 
portended by certain aspects or conditions of that luminary, 

35 Doomsday is the old word for judgment-day. The meaning is that the 
Moon was sick almost unto death. 

36 The Poet repeatedly uses fierce in the general sense of violent, swift, 
excessive, vehement. So he has "fierce vanities," "fierce abridgment," and 
" fierce wretchedness," — Precurse iox precursor, forerunner. 

3" Omen is here a portentous or ofuinous event. 

38 Climature for clime or climate ; used in a local sense. 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 53 

But soft, behold ! lo, where it comes again ! 

Re-enter the Ghost. 

I'll cross it, though it blast me.39 — Stay, illusion ! 
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice. 
Speak to me : 

If there be any good thing to be done, 
That may to thee do ease and grace to me, 
Speak to me : 

If thou art privy to thy country's fate, 
Which happily foreknowing ^o may avoid, 
O, speak ! 

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life 
Extorted treasure in the womb of Earth, 
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, 
Speak of it: ^Cock crows, 

stay, and speak ! — Stop it, Marcellus. 

Marc. Shall I strike at it with my partisan P^^ 

Bora. Do, if it will not stand. 

Bern. 'Tis here ! 

Hora. 'Tis here ! 

Marc. 'Tis gone ! \_Exit Ghost. 

We do it wrong, being so majestical, 

39 It was believed that a person crossing the path of a spectre became 
subject to its malignant influence. Lodge's Illustrations of English History, 
speaking of Ferdinand, Earl of Derby, who died by witchcraft, as was sup- 
posed, in 1594, has the following : " On Friday there appeared a tall man, 
■who twice crossed him swiftly; and when the earl came to the place where 
he saw this man, he fell sick." 

40 Which happy or fortimate foreknowledge may avoid : a participle and 
adverb used with the sense of a substantive and adjective. — It was an old 
superstition that, if a man had " devoured widows' houses " or the portion 
of orphans, he could not he quiet in his grave. 

41 Partisan was a halbert ox pike ; a weapon used by watchmen. 



54 HAMLET, ACT I. 

To offer it the show of violence ; 
For it is, as the air, invulnerable, 
And our vain blows malicious mockery. 

Bern. It was about to speak, when the cock crew. 

Hora. And then it started like a guilty thing 
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard, 
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn. 
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat 
Awake the god of day ; and at his warning, 
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, 
Th' extravagant and erring ^^ spirit hies 
To his confine : '^^ and of the truth herein 
This present object made probation.^^ 

Marc. It faded on the crowing of the cock. 
Some say that ever, 'gainst that season comes 
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated. 
The bird of dawning singeth all night long : 
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad ; 
The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike, 

42 Extravagant is extra-vaga7is, wandering about, going beyond bounds. 
Erring is erraticus, straying or roving up and down. 

43 Coijfine for place of confinement. — This is a very ancient belief. Pru- 
dentius, born in 348, has a hymn, Ad Galllcinium, which aptly illustrates 
the text : — 

Ferunt, vagantes D^monas, Hoc esse signum praescii 

Lstos tenebris Noctium, . Norunt repromiss^ Spei, 

Gallo canente exterritos Qua nos soporis liberi 

Sparsim timere, et cedere. Speramus adventum Dei. 

Still more apposite is the following from the old Sarum service : — 
Preco diei jam sonat, Hoc excitatus Lucifer 

Noctis profunda pervigil ; Solvit polum caligine ; 

Nocturna lux viantibus, Hoc omnis errorum chorus 

A nocte noctem segregans. Viam nocendi deserit. 

Gallo canente, spes redit, &c. 

44 Probation for proof. Repeatedly so. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 55 

No fairy takes,'*^ nor witch hath power to charm, 
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time. 

Hora. So have I heard and do in part beheve it. 
But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, 
Walks o'er the dew of yond high eastern hill : ^^ 
Break we our watch up ;4'^ and, by my advice, , 
Let us impart what we have seen to-night 
Unto young Hamlet ; for, upon my life. 
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. 
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, 
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty? 

Marc. ■ Let's do't, I pray ; and I this morning know 
Where we shall find him most conveniently. {Exeunt 

Scene II. — A Roo?n of State in the Castle. 

Enter the King, the Queen, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, 

VoLTiMAND, Cornelius, Lords, <2;z^ Attendants. 

King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death 
The memory be green, and that ^ it us befitted 

45 Take was used for blast, infect, or sinite with disease. So in King 
Lear, ii. 4 : " Strike her young bones, you taking airs, with lameness." — 
Gracious, in Shakespeare, sometimes means full of grace or of the Divine 
favour. 

46 These last three speeches are admirably conceived. The speakers are 
in a highly kindled state : when the Ghost vanishes, their terror presently 
subsides into an inspiration of the finest quality, and their intense excite- 
ment, as it passes off, blazes up in a subdued and pious rapture of poetry. 

47 This, let the grammarians say what they will, is a clear instance of the 
first person plural, in the imperative mood. The same has occurred once 
before : '' Well, sit ive doivn, and let us hear Bernardo speak of this." 

1 Instead of that, present usage would repeat thozigh. But in such cases 
the old language in full was though that, if that, since that, wheJi that, 8:c. ; 
and Shak^peare, in a second clause, very often uses the latter word instead 
of repeating the first. The same thing often occurs in Burke, who died in 
1797. 



56 HAMLET, ACT I. 

To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom 
To be contracted in one brow of woe, ■ 
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature 
That we with wiser sorrow think on him. 
Together with remembrance of ourselves. 
Therefore our sometime ^ sister, now our Queen, 
Th' imperial jointress*^ of this warlike State, 
Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy, — 
With one auspicious and one dropping eye ; ^ 
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage. 
In equal scale weighing delight and dole ; — 
Taken to wife : nor have we herein barr'd 
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone 
With this affair along : ^ For all, our thanks. 

Now follows that you know : ^ Young Fortinbras, 
Holding a weak supposal of our worth, 
Or thinking by our late dear brother's death 
Our State to be disjoint^ and out of frame, 

2 Sometime, in the sense oiforiner, ox formerly. See page 48, note 12. 

3 Jointress is the same as heiress. The Poet herein follows the history, 
which represents the former King to have come to the throne by marriage ; 
so that whatever of hereditary claim Hamlet has to the crown is in right of 
his mother. See the Introduction, page 7. 

4 The same thought occurs in The Winter's Tale, v. 2 : " She had one 
eye declined for the loss of her husband, another elevated that the oracle was 
fulfill'd." There is an old proverbial phrase, " To laugh with one eye, and 
cry with the otlier." 

5 Note the strained, elaborate, and antithetic style of the King's speech 
thus far. As he is there shamming and playing the hypocrite, he naturally 
tries how finely he can word it. In what follows, he speaks like a man, his 
mind moving with simplicity and directness as soon as he comes to plain 
matters of business. 

6 " Now follows that which you know already'' That wa^ontinually 
used where we should use what. 

"^ Disjoint for disjointed. The Poet has many preterites so formed. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 57 

Colleagued^ with the dream of his advantage, 

He hath not fail'd to pester us witli message, 

Importing the surrender of tliose lands 

Lost by his father, with all bands ^ of law, 

To our most valiant brother. So much for him. 

Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting : 

Thus- much the business is : We have here writ 

To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras, — 

Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears 

Of this his nephew's purpose, — to suppress 

His further gait herein ; in that^^ the levies, 

The lists, and full proportions, are all made 

Out of his subject : — And we here dispatch 

You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand, 

For bearers of this greeting to old Norway ; 

Giving to you no further personal power 

To^i business with the King more than the scope 

Of these dilated articles allow.^^ 

Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty. 

Com. 1 

y J ^ In that and all things will we show our duty. 

8 Colleagued does not refer to, or, as we should say, agree with Fortin- 
bras, but with supposal, or rather with the whole sense of the three preceding 
lines. So that the meaning is, " his supposal of our weakness, or of our un- 
settled condition, united with his expectation of advantage," 

9 Band and boftd were the same, and both used for obligation. 

10 Gait IS course, progress ; which is much the same as walk. — In that 
has the sense of because or inasmuch as. Often so. 

11 To was often thus used where we should use for. So a little before, in 
" taken to wife," and a little after in " bow them to your gracious leave." 

12 The scope of these articles when dilated or explained in full. Such 
elliptical expressions are common with the Poet. The rules of modern 
grammar would require allows instead of alloio ; but in old writers, when 
the noun and the verb have a genitive intervening, it is very common for 
the verb to take the number of the genitive. 



58 HAMLET, ACT I. 

King. We doubt it nothing ; heartily farewell. — 

\_Exeinit VoLTiMAND aitd Cornelius. 

And now, Laertes, what's the news with you ?- 

You told us of some suit : what is't, Laertes? 

You cannot speak of reason ^^ to the Dane, 

And lose your voice : w^hat wouldst thou beg, Laertes, 

That shall not be my offer, not thy asking ? 

The head is not more native to the heart, 

The hand more instrumental to the mouth, 

Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father. ^^ 

What wouldst thou have, Laertes? 

Laer. Dread my lord,!^ 

Your leave and favour to return to France ; 
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark, 
To show my duty in your coronation. 
Yet now, I must confess, that duty done, 
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France, 
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon. 

King. Have you your father's leave ? — What says Polo- 
nius ? 

Polo. He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave 
By laboursome petition ; and at last 
Upon his will I seal'd my hard ^^ consent : 
I do beseech you, give him leave to go. 

Ki7ig. Take thy fair hour, Laertes ; time be thine, 

13 That is, cannot speak what is reasonable. 

14 The various parts of the body enumerated are not more allied, more 
necessary to each other, than the King of Denmark is bound to your father 
to do him service. 

15 We should say " my dread lord." Shakespeare abounds in such inver- 
sions. So "good my lord," " dear my brother," " sweet my sister," &c. 

IS HijrdioT reluctant, difficult ; like sIow\m%\ before. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 59 

And thy best graces spend it at thy will ! ^^ — 
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son, — 

Hai7i. \_Aside^ A little more than kin, and less than 
kind.18 

King. — How is it that the clouds still hang on you ? 

Ham. Not so, my lord ; I am too much i' the sun.^^ 

Queen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, 
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. 
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids^^ 
Seek for thy noble father in the dust. 
Thou know'st 'tis common ; all that live must die, 
Passing through nature to eternity. 

Ham. Ay, madam, it is common. 

Queen. If it be, 

Why seems it so particular with thee ? 

Ha?n. Seems, madam ! nay, it is ; I know not seems. 
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, 

1'^ " Take an auspicious hour, Laertes ; be your time your own, and thy 
best virtues guide thee in spending of it at thy will." 

18 The King is " a little more than kin " to Hamlet, because, in being at 
once his uncle and his father, he is twice kin. And he is " less than kind," 
because his incestuous marriage, as Hamlet views it, is unnatural or out of 
nature. The Poet repeatedly uses kind in its primitive sense of nature. So, 
"your cuckoo sings by kind" and, "fitted by kind for rape and villainy."^ 
Cousin was used in the general sense of kinsinan, especially for nephew and 
niece, as well as in its modern sense. 

19 Hamlet seems to have a twofold, perhaps a threefold meaning here. 
First, he intends a sort of antithesis to the King's, " How is it that the clouds 
still hang on you ? " Second, he probably alludes to the old proverbial 
phrase of being in the sun, or in the watm sun, which used to signify the 
state of being without the charities of home and kindred, — exposed to the 
social inclemencies of the world. Hamlet regards himself as exiled from 
these charities, as having lost both father and. mother. Perhaps he also 
intends a sarcastic quibble between suji and son. 

20 With downcast eyes. To vail is to lower, to let fall. 



6o HAMLET, ACT I. 

Nor customary suits of solemn black. 
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, 
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, 
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, 
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief. 
That can denote me truly : these, indeed, seem. 
For they are actions that a man might play : 
But I have that within which passeth show ; 
These but the trappings and the suits of woe. 

King. 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Ham- 
let, 
To give these mourning duties to your father : 
But, you must know, your father lost a father ; 
That father lost, lost his ; and the survivor bound 
In filial obligation for some term 
To do obsequious ^i sorrow : but to persevere 
In obstinate condolement is a course 
Of impious stubbornness ; 'tis unmanly grief : 
It shows a will most incorrect ^^ to Heaven, 
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient. 
An understanding simple and unschool'd : 
For what we know must be, and is as common 
As any the most vulgar thing to sense, 
Why should we in our peevish opposition 
Take it to heart ? Fie ! 'tis a fault to Heaven, 
A fault against the dead, a fault to Nature, 
To reason most absurd ; whose common theme 
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried. 
From the first corse till he that died to-day, 
This must be so. We pray you, throw to earth 

21 The Poet uses obsequious as having the sense of obsequies. 

22 Incorrect is here used in the sense of incorrigible. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 6 1 

This unprevailing~3 woe, and think of us 
As of a father ; for let the world take note, 
You are the most immediate to our throne ; 
And with no less nobility of love 
Than that which dearest father bears his son 
Do I impart toward you.^'^ For your intent 
In going back to school in Wittenberg,^^ 
It is most retrograde to our desire ; 
And we beseech you, bend you to remain 
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye. 
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son. 

Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet : 
I pray thee, stay with us ; go not to Wittenberg. 

Hajn. I shall in all my best obey you, madam. 

Kmg. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply : 
Be as ourself in Denmark. — Madam, come ; 
This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet 
Sits smiling to my heart : in grace whereof. 
No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day, 
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell ; 
And the King's rouse ^e the heavens shall bruit again, 

23 UnprevalUng was used in the sense of MnavaUing. 

24 " Impart towards you," seems rather odd language, especially as im- 
part has no object. The meaning probably is, " I take you into a partner- 
ship," or, " I invest you with a participation of the royal dignity, as heir- 
presumptive." — "Nobility of love" is merely a generous or heightened 
phrase for love. See Critical Notes, 

25 School was applied to places not only of academical, but also of pro- 
fessional study ; and in the olden time men were wont to spend their whole 
lives in such cloistered retirements of learning. So that we need not sup- 
pose Hamlet was " going back to school " as an undergraduate, 

26 A rouse was a deep draught to one's health, wherein it was the custom 
to empty the cup or goblet. Its meaning, and probably its origin, was the 
same as carouse. To bruit is to noise; used with agaiii, the same as echo or 
reverberate. 



62 HAMLET, ACT I, 

Respeaking earthly thunder. Come away. 

\Exeunt all but Hamlet. 
Ham. O, that this too-too solid flesh would melt, 
Thaw, and resolve ^^ itself into a dew ! 
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd 
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter ! O God ! O God ! 
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 
Seem to me all the uses of this world ! 
Fie on't ! O fie ! 'tis an unweeded garden. 
That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature 
Possess it merely .2^ That it should come to tliis ! 
But two months dead ! — nay, not so much, not two : 
So excellent a king ; that was, to this, 
Hyperion to a satyr ^^^ go loving to my mother, 
That he might not beteem^o ^he winds of heaven 
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and Earth ! 
Must I remember ? why, she would hang on him, 
As if increase of appetite had grown 
By what it fed on : and yet, within a month, — 
Let me not think on't, — Frailty, thy name is woman ! — 
A little month, or e'er^i those shoes were old 
With which she foUow'd my poor father's body, 

2'^ Resolve in its old sense of dissolve. The three words melt, thaw, and 
resolve, all signifying the same thing, are used merely for emphasis, — ttielt, 
melt, melt. 

28 Merely in one of the Latin senses of mere ; wholly, entirely. 

29 Hyperio7t, which literally means sublimity, was one of the names of 
Apollo, the most beautiful of all the gods, and much celebrated in classic 
poetry for his golden locks. Here, as often, to has the force of compared to, 
or in comparison with. 

3" Beteem is an old word for permit or suffer. 

31 Or every^Qsm. common use {ox before, sooner than. So in Daniel, vi. 
24 : " And the lions brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came to the 
bottom of the den." 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. . 62 

Like Niobe, all tears ; ^2 — ^^^y^ ghe, even she — 

O God ! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,33 

Would have mourn'd longer — married with my uncle, 

My father's brother ; but no more like my father 

Than I to Hercules : within a month ; 

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears 

Had left the flushing ^4 in her galled eyes, 

She married. O, most wicked speed, to post 

With such dexterity to incestuous sheets ! 

It is not, nor it cannot come to, good : 

But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue. 

£n^er Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo. 
Jlora. Hail to your lordship ! 

■^a^^i' I'm glad to see you well : 

Horatio, — or I do forget myself. 

Hora. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever. 
Ham. Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with 
you : ^^ 
And what make you^e from Wittenberg, Horatio? — 
Marcellus ? 

32 Niobe was the wife of Amphion, King of Thebes. As she had twelve 
children, she went to crowing one day over Latona, who had only two, 
Apollo and Diana. In return for this, all her twelve were slain by Latona's 
two ; and Jupiter, in pity of her sorrow, transformed her into a rock, from 
which her tears issued in a perennial stream. 

33 Discourse of reason, in old philosophical language, is rational discourse, 
or discursive reason ; the faculty of pursuing a train of thought, or of pass- 
ing from thought to thought in the way of inference or conclusion. 

34 Shakespeare has leave repeatedly in the sense of leave off, or cease. 
Flushing is the redness of the eyes caused by what the Poet elsewhere calls 
" eye-offending brine." 

35 As if he had said, " No, not my poor servant : we are friends; that is 
the style I will exchange with you." 

36 " What make you ? " is old language for " What do you ? " 



64 HAMLET, ACT I. 

Marc. My good lord, — 

Ham. I'm very glad to see you. — [71? Bernardo.] 
Good even, sir.^''' — 
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg ? 

Hora. A truant disposition, good my lord. 

Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so ; 
Nor shall you do mine ear that violence, 
To make it truster of your own report 
Against yourself : I know you are no truant. 
But what is your affair in Elsinore ? 
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart. 

Hoj^a. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral. 

Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student ; 
I think it was to see my mother's wedding. 

Hora. Indeed, my lord, it follow' d hard upon. 

Hajn. Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! the funeral baked meats ^^ 
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. 
Would I had met my dearest ^^ foe in Heaven 
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio ! 
My father ! — methinks I see my father. 

Hora. O, where, my lord? 

Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio. 

37 The words, Good even, sir, are evidently addressed to Bernardo, whom 
Hamlet has not before known ; but as he now meets him in company with 
old acquaintances, like a true gentleman, as he is, he gives him a salutation 
of kindness. — Marcellus has said before of Hamlet, " I this viorning know 
where we shall find him." But ^(7(?^ ^t;^?? was the common salutation after 
noon. 

38 Scott, in The Bride of Lammermoor, has made the readers of romance 
familiar with the old custom of " funeral baked meats," which was kept up 
in Scotland till a recent period. — Thrift means econoiny : all was done 
merely to save cost. 

39 In Shakespeare's time dearest was applied to any person or thing that 
excites the liveliest interest, whether of love or hate. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 65 

Hora. I saw him once ; he was a goodly king. 

Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all, 
I shall not look upon his like again. 

Hora. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight. 

Ham. Saw who ? 

Hora. My lord, the King your father. 

Ham. The King my father ! 

Hora. Season your admiration ^^ for a while 
With an attentive ear, till I deliver. 
Upon the witness of these gentlemen, 
This marvel to you. 

Ham. For God's love, let me hear. 

Hora. Two nights together had these gentlemen, 
Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch, 
In the dead vasf^^ and middle of the night. 
Been thus encounter'd : A figure like your father, 
Arm'd at all points, exactly, cap-a-pie, 
Appears before them, and with solemn march 
Goes slow and stately by them : thrice he walk'd 
By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes, 
Within his truncheon's length ; whilst they, distill'd 
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,^^ 
Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me 
In dreadful secrecy impart they did ; 
And I with them the third night kept the watch : 
Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time, 

40 Admiration in the Latin sense of wonder or astonishment. — Season is 
qualify or tejnper. 
r 41 Vast is void or vacancy. So in The Teynpest, i. 2 : " Urchins shall, for 
that vast of night that they may work," &c. 

•*2 To distill is to fall in drops, to melt ; so that distill'd is a very natural 
and fit expression for the cold sweat caused by intense fear. " The act of 
fear " is the actio fi or the effect of fear. 



66 HAMLET, ACT ^ 

Form of the thing, each word made true and good, 
The apparition comes. I knew your father ; 
These hands are not more Uke, 

Ham. But where was this ? 

Marc. My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd. 

Ham. Did you not speak to it ? 

Hora. My lord, I did ; 

But answer made it none : yet once methought 
It lifted up its head and did address 
Itself to motion, like as it would speak ; 
But even then the morning cock crew loud, 
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away. 
And vanish'd from our sight. 

Ham. 'Tis very strange. 

Hora. As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true ; 
And we did think it writ down in our duty 
To let you know of it. 

Ham. Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me. 
Hold you the watch to-night ? 

„ ' >- We do, my lord. 

Ham. Arm'd, say you ? 

Marc. ) , , , 

Bern. \ ^'"^ ^' "^^ ^°'^- 

Ham. From top to toe ? 

Marc. ) , ,r , 1 <. 1 1 r 

„ \ My lord, from head to foot. 

Bern. ) •' 

Ham. Then saw you not his face ? 

Hora. O, yes, my lord ; he wore his beaver up.*^ 

Ham. What, look'd he frowningly? 

43 The beaver was a movable part of the helmet, which could be drawn 
down over the face or pushed up over the forehead. 



SCENE II. 



PRINCE OF DENMARK. 67 



Hora. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. 

Ham. Pale, or red? 

Hora. Nay, very pale. 

Ham. And fix'd his eyes upon you? 

Hora. Most constantly. 

Hun. I would I had been there. 

Hora. It would have much amazed you. 

Ham. Very like, very like. Stay' d it long ? 

Hora. While one with moderate haste might telH'* a 

hundred. 
Marc. ^ 

Bern. \ ^^^S"'' ^^^S'^' 

Hora. Not when I saw't. 

Ham. His beard was grizzled? — no? 

Hora. It was, as I have seen it in his Hfe, 
A sable silver'd. 

Ham. I'll watch to-night ; 

Perchance 'twill walk again. 

Hora. I warrant it will. 

Ham. If it assume my noble father's person, 
I'll speak to it, though Hell itself should gape. 
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, 
If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight, 
Let it be tenable ^^ in your silence still ; 
And whatsoever else shall hap to-night. 
Give it an understanding, but no tongue : 
I will requite your loves. So, fare you well : 
Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, 
I'll visit you. 

All. Our duty to your Honour. 

■*4 To tell was continually used for to count. 

45 Tenable for retained. The Poet has many like instances of confusion 



68 HAMLET, ACT I. 

Ham. Your loves, as mine to you j farewell. — 

\_Exeunt all but Hamlet. 
My father's spirit in arms ! all is not well ; 
I doubt ^6 some foul play : would the night were come ! 
Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise, 
Though all the Earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes. \_Exit. 

Scene III. — A Room in Polonius^s House. 
Enter Laertes and Ophelia.^ 

Laer. My necessaries are embark'd ; farewell : 
And, sister, as the winds give benefit 
And convoy is assistant,^ do not sleep. 
But let me hear from you.*^ 

Ophe. Do you doubt that ? 

Laer. For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour, 
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, 
A violet in the youth of primy nature, 
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting. 
The perfume and supplyance of a minute ; "* 
No more. 

of forms ; as admired for admirable, that is, wonderful, in Macbeth, iii. 4 : 
" Broke the good meeting with most admired disorder. 
46 Doubt in the sense of fear or suspect. Repeatedly so. 

1 This scene must be regarded as one of Shakespeare's lyric movements 
in the play, and the skill with which it is interwoven with the dramatic parts 
IS peculiarly an excellence with our Poet. You experience the sensation of 
a pause, without the sense of a stop. — COLERIDGE. 

2 Convoy is used for conveyance. Communication with France being by 
sea, of course there needed, both a ship to carry letters, and a wind to drive 
the ship. 

2 That is, " without letting me hear from you." The Poet repeatedly 
uses but in this way ; the exceptive but, from be out. The usage is very 
common in Scotch : Burns has it frequently 

4 A mere pastime, to supply ox fill up the passing hour ; a sweet play, to 



SCENE III. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 69 

Ophe, No more but so ? 

Laer. Think it no more : ^ 

For nature, crescent, does not grow alone 
In thews ^ and bulk, but, as this temple waxes, 
The inward service of the mind and soul 
Grows wide withal."^ Perhaps he loves you now ; 
And now no soil nor cautel^ doth besmirch 
The virtue of his will : but you must fear ; 
His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own ; 
For he himself is subject to his birth \^ 
He- may not, as unvalued persons do. 
Carve for himself; for on his choice depends 
The safety and the health of the whole State ; 
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed 
Unto the voice and yielding of that body 
Whereof he is the head.i^ Then, if he says he loves you. 
It fits your wisdom so far to beHeve it 
As he in his particular act and place 
May give his saying deed ; 11 which is no further 
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal. 
Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain, 

beguile the present idle time. Instead of supply ance, the Poet elsewhere has 
siipplyvient in much the same sense. 

s " Take for granted that such is the case, till you have clear proof to the 
contrary." — Crescent is growing, increasing. 

6 Thews is an old word for sinews or muscles. 

"> The idea is, that Hamlet's love is but a youthful fancy which, as his 
mind comes to maturity, he will outgrow. The passage would seem to in- 
fer that the Prince is not so old as he is elsewhere represented to be. 

8 Cautel is a debauched relation of caution, and means fraud or deceit. 

9 Subject to the conditions which his birth entails upon him. 

1*^ His choice of a wife must be limited by the approval or consent of the 
nation. 

11 So far only as he, in his public and ofificial character, shall make his 
promise good. 



70 HAMLET, ACT 1. 

If with too credent ear you list his songs, ^^ 
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open 
To his unmaster'd importunity. 
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister ; 
And keep you in the rear of your affection, 
Out of the shot and danger of desire. 
Th' unchariest maid is prodigal enough, 
If she unmask her beauty to the Moon : 
Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes : 
The canker galls the infants of the Spring, 
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed ; ^^ 
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth 
Contagious blastments are most imminent. 
Be wary, then ; best safety lies in fear : 
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near. 

Ophe. I shall th' effect of this good lesson keep, 
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, 
Do not, as some ungracious pastors ^^ do. 
Show me the steep and thorny way to Heaven, 
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine. 
Himself the primrose path of dalhance treads. 
And recks not his own read.^^ 

Laer, O, fear me not. 

I stay too long : but here my father comes. — 

Enter Polonius. 



12 " If with too credulous ear you listen to his songs." 

13 In Shakespeare's time, canker was often used of the worm that kills 
the early buds before they open out into flowers. Perhaps it here means a 
disease that sometimes infests plants, and eats out their life. — Buttons \% 
buds, and disclose is used in the sense of open or unfold. 

14 Pastors that have not the grace to practice what they preach. 

15 Regards not his own lesson. 



SCENE III. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 71 

A double blessing is a double grace ; 
Occasion smiles upon a second leave. 

Polo. Yet here, Laertes? aboard, aboard, for shame ! 
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail, 
And you are stay'd for. There ; my blessing with thee ! 
x\nd these few precepts in thy memory 
See thou character.!*^ Give thy thoughts no tongue, 
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.^^ 
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.i^ 
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, 
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel ; 
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment 
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade.^^ Beware 
Of entrance to a quarrel ; but, being in, 
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee. 
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice : 
Take each man's censure,^^ but reserve thy judgment. 
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 
But not express 'd in fancy ; rich, not gaudy : 
For the apparel oft proclaims the man ; 
And they in France of the best rank and station 
Are most select and generous, chief in that.^^ 
Neither a borrower nor a lender be : 
For loan oft loses both itself and friend ; 

16 To character is to engrave or imprint. 

1'^ Unproportion' d for unhandsome or unfitting. His, again, for its. See 
page 47, note 8. 

18 Vulgar is here used in its old sense of common. 

19 " Do not Hunt thy feeling by taking every new acquaintance by the 
hand, or by admitting him to the intimacy of a friend." 

20 Censure was continually used for opinion, ox judgment. 

21 That is, most select and generous, but chiefly or especially so in the 
matter of dress. 



72 HAMLET, ACT I. 

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. 

This above all : To thine own self be true ; 

And it must follow, as the night the day, 

Thou canst not then be false to any man.^^ 

Farewell ; my blessing season ^^ this in thee ! 

Laer. Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord, 
Folo. The time invites you ; go, your servants tend, 
Laei\ Farewell, Ophelia ; and remember well 

What I have said to you. 

Ophe. 'Tis in my memory lock'd^ 

And you yourself shall keep the key of it. 

Laer. Farewell. , \_Exit 

Polo. What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you? 
Ophe. So please you, something touching the Lord Ham- 
let. 
Polo. Marry,^'* well bethought : 

'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late 

Given private time to you ; and you yourself 

Have of your audience been most free and bounteous. 

If it be so, — as so 'tis put on me, 

^2 This is regarded by many as a very high strain of morality. I cannot 
see it so ; though, to be sure, it is as high as Polonius can go : it is the 
height of worldly wisdom, — a rule of being wisely selfish. In the same 
sense, " honesty is the best policy " ; but no truly honest man ever acts on 
that principle ; and a man who fixes upon no higher rule than that of be- 
ing true to himself will never be really true to himself. This is one of the 
cases wherein a man must aim at the greater, else he will not attain the less. 
In other words, a man . will never be really true to himself, unless it be a 
matter of conscience with him to be true to something higher than himself. 
K passion for rectitude is the only thing that will serve. See iii. 4, note 16. 

23 Season is here used, apparently, in the sense of itigjuin ; the idea be- 
ing that of so steeping the counsel into his mind that it will not fade out. 

24 Marry was continually used as a general intensive, like heracle and 
edepol in Latin. The usage sprang from the custom of swearing by St, 
Mary the Virgin Mother. 



SCENE III. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 73 

And that in way of caution, — I must tell you, 
You do not understand yourself so clearly 
As it behoves my daughter and your honour. 
What is between you ? give me up the truth. 

Ophe. He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders 
Of his affection to me. 

Polo. Affection ! pooh ! you speak like a green girl. 
Unsifted 25 in such perilous circumstance. 
Do you believe his — tenders, as you call them ? 

Ophe. I do not know, my lord, what I should think. 

Polo. Marry, I'll teach you : think yourself a baby ; 
That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay, 
Which are not sterhng.^^ Tender yourself more dearly ; ^7 
Or — not to crack the wind of the poor phrase. 
Running it thus^^ — you'll tender me a fool. 

Ophe. My lord, he hath importuned me with love 
In honourable fashion ; — 

Polo. Ay, fashion you may call it ; go to, go to.^^ 

Ophe. — And hath given countenance to his speech, my 
lord, 
With almost all the holy vows of Heaven. 

Polo. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks.-^^ I do know, 

25 Unsifted is untried, inexperienced. We still speak of sifting a matter, 
in the same sense. 

26 Polonius is using tender in different senses ; here in a business or finan- 
cial sense, as in the phrase " legal tender." So our " greenbacks," though 
legal tender, have not been sterling; that is, have been below par. 

27 " Take better care of yourself." To tender a thing is, in one sense, to 
be tender or careful of it, Shakespeare has the word repeatedly so. 

28 Polonius is likening the phrase to a poor nag, which, if run too hard, 
will be wind-broken. 

29 Go to is an old phrase of varying import ; sometimes meaning hush 
up, sometimes come on, sometimes go ahead. 

SO This was a proverbial phrase. There is a collection of epigrams under 



74 HAMLET, ACT i 

When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul 

Lends the tongue vows : these blazes, daughter. 

Giving more light than heat, extinct in both, 

Even in their promise, as it is a-making. 

You must not take for fire.^^ From this time 

Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence ; 

Set your entreatments at a higher rate 

Than a command to parley.^^ For Lord Hamlet, 

Believe so much in hiin, that he is young ; 

And with a larger tether -^"^ may he walk 

Than may be given you. In few,^^ Ophelia, 

Do not believe his vows ; for they are brokers,^^ — 

Not of that dye which their investments show. 

But mere implorators of unholy suits, 

Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,^^ 

The better to beguile. This is for all, — 

I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth. 

Have you so slander *^^ any moment's leisure, 

that title : the woodcock being accounted a witless bird, from a vulgar notion 
that it had no brains. " Springes to catch woodcocks " means arts to entrap 
simplicity. Springe is, properly, snare or trap. — Blood, in the next line, is 
put for passion. Often so. 

31 Here, as often, yf?-^ is two syllables : the verse requires it so. 

32 Be more difficult of access, and let the suits to you for that purpose be 
of higher respect than a command to parley. 

33 That is, with a lojtger line ; a horse, fastened by a string to a stake, is 
tethei'ed. 

34 In few words ; in short. 

35 Brokers, as the word is here used, are go-betweens, or panders ; the 
same as bawds, a little after. 

36 So in As You Like It, ii. 3 : " Your virtues are sanctified and holy trai- 
tors to you." This joining of words that are really contradictory, or qualify- 
ing of a noun with adjectives that literally quench it, sometimes gives great 
strength of expression. Even so grave a writer as Hooker speaks of stealing 
certain benefits upon men " through a kind of heavenly fraud" 

37 That is, so disgrace, or misuse, as to cause slander. 



SCENE IV. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 75 

As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet. 
Look to't, I charge you : come your ways. 

Ophe. I shall obey, my lord. \JExeunt, 

Scene IV. — The Platform. 
Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus. 

Ham. The air bites shrewdly ; it is very cold. 

Hora. It is a nipping and an eager ^ air. 

Ham. What hour now? 

Hora. I think it lacks of twelve. 

Ham. No; it is struck. 

Hora. Indeed? I heard it not: it then draws near the 
season 
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk. 

\_A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot ofl^ within. 
What does this mean, my lord ? 

Ham. The King doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse,^ 
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels ; ^ 
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down. 
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out 
The triumph of his pledge. 

Ho7'a. Is it a custom ? 

Ham. Ay, marry is't ; 
But to my mind, though I am native here 

1 Eager \n2ls used in the sense of the French aigre, sharp, biting. 

2 To wake is to Jiold a late revel or debauch. A rotise is what we now call 
a bumper. — Wassail originally meant a drinking to one's health ; from wees 
heel, health be to you : hence it came to be used for any festivity of the 
Ibottle and the bowl. 

3 Reels through the swaggering up-sprlng, which was the name of a rude, 
boisterous German dance, as appears from a passage in Chapman's Alphon- 
sus : " We Germans have no changes in our dances ; an almain and an up' 
iprifig, that is all." 



76 HAMLET, ACT I. 

And to the manner born, it is a custom 

More honour'd in the breach than the observance. 

This heavy-headed revel east and west^ 

Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations : 

They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase 

Soil our addition ; ^ and indeed it takes 

From our achievements, though perform'd at height, 

The pith and marrow of our attribute.^ 

So, oft it chances in particular men,''' 

That for some vicious mole of nature in them, 

As in their birth, — wherein they are not guilty, 

Since nature cannot choose his origin ; — 

4 The sense of east and west goes with what follows, not what precedes : 
" brings reproach upon us in all directions." To tax was often used for to 
charge, to accuse. 

5 Clepe is an old Saxon word for call. — The Poet often uses addition for 
title ; so that the meaning is, they sully our title by likening us to swine. 
The character here ascribed to the Danes appears to have had a basis of fact. 
Haywood, in his Drujikard Opened, 1635, speaking of " the vinosity of na- 
tions," says the Danes have made profession thereof from antiquity, and are 
the first upon record " that have brought their wassel bowls and elbowdeep 
healths into this land." 

6 That is, of our reputation, or of what is attributed to us. 

■^ Hamlet is now wrought up to the highest pitch of expectancy; his 
mind is sitting on thorns ; and he seeks relief from the pain of that over- 
intense feeling by launching off into a strain of general and abstract reflec- 
tion. His state of mind, distracted between his eager anticipation and his 
train of thought, aptly registers itself in the irregular and broken structure 
of his language. Coleridge remarks upon the passage as follows : " The 
unimportant conversation with which this scene opens is a proof of Shake- 
speare's minute knowledge of human nature. It is a well-established fact, 
that, on the brink of any serious enterprise, or event of moment, men almost 
invariably endeavour to elude the pressure of their own thoughts by turning 
aside to trivial objects and familiar circumstances : thus this dialogue on 
the platform begins with remarks on the coldness of the air, and inquiries, 
obliquely connected indeed with the expected hour of the visitation, but 
thrown out in a seeming vacuity of topics, as, to the striking of the clock, 
and so forth." 



SCENE IV. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 77 

By the o'ergrowth of some complexion, 

Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason ; ^ 

Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens 

The form of plausive ^ manners ; — that these men, — 

Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, 

Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,io — 

Their virtues else — be they as pure as grace, 

As infinite as man may undergo — 

Shall in the general censure take corruption 

From that particular fault ; the dram of leav'n 

Doth all the noble substance of 'em sour, 

To his own scandal ;^^ — 

8 The idea is, of some native aptitude indulged and fostered too much, so 
that it breaks down the proper guards and strongholds of reason. Here, as 
in some other cases, pales is palings. And complexion was often used, as 
here, to signify any constitutional texture, aptitude, ox predisposition. 

9 Plausive for approvable, or that which is to be applauded ; the active 
form with the passive sense. This indiscriminate use of active and passive 
forms, both in adjectives and participles, was very common. So Milton has 
unexpressive for inexpressible, and Shakespeare has decelvable for deceptive. 

10 Alluding to the old astrological notion, of a man's character or fortune 
being determined by the star that was in the ascendant on the day of his 
birth. — Livery is properly a badge-dress ; of course, here put for a man's 
distinctive idiom. — Note the change of the subject from these men to their 
virtues. 

11 His, again, for its, referring to stibstance, or, possibly, to leav'n. Oi 
course 'em refers to virtues. So that the meaning is, that the dram of leaven 
sours all the noble substance of their virtues, insomuch as to bring reproach 
and scandal on that substance itself. The Poet seems to have had in mind 
Saint Paul's proverbial saying, i Corinthians, v. 6 : "A little leaven leaven- 
eth the whole lump." And so in Bacon's Henry the Seventh : " And, as a 
little leaven of new distaste doth commonly soure the whole lumpe of former 
merites, the King's wit began now to suggest unto his passion," &c. This is 
said in reference to Sir William Stanley, whose prompt and timely action 
gained the victory of Bosworth Field. Some years after, he became a suitor 
for the earldom of Chester ; whereupon, as Bacon says, " his suit did end 
not only in a denial, but in a distaste " on the part of the King. See Critical 
Notes. 



7S HAMLET, ACT I. 

Hora, Look^ my lord, it comes ! 

Enter the Ghost. 

Ham. Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! — 
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd ; 
Bring with thee airs from Heaven or blasts from Hell ; 
Be thy intents wicked or charitable ; 
Thou comest in such a questionable ^^ shape, 
That I will speak to thee : I'll call thee Hamlet, 
King, father : royal Dane, O, answer me ! 
Let me not burst in ignorance ; but tell 
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, 
Have burst their cerements ; i^ why the sepulchre. 
Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urn'd. 
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws. 
To cast thee up again. What may this mean, 
.That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel 
Revisit'st thus the gUmpses of the Moon, 
Making night hideous ; and we fools of Nature 
So horridly to shake our disposition 
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls ?^* 
Say, why is this ? wherefore ? what should we do ? 

[Ghost beckons Hamlet. 

12 " A questionable shape " is a shape that may be questioned, or con' 
versed with. In Hke manner the Poet often uses question for conversation. 

13 Canonized means made sacred by the canonical rites of sepulture. — 
Cerements is a dissyUable. It is from a Latin word meaning wax, and was 
so appHed from the use of wax or pitch in seahng up coffins or caskets so as 
to make them waterproof. 

14 " We fools of Nature," in the sense here implied, is, we who cannot by 
nature know the mysteries of the supernatural world. Strict grammar 
would require us instead of we. — The general idea of the passage seems to 
be, that man's intellectual eye is not strong enough to bear the unmuffled 
fight of eternity. 



SCENE IV. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 79 

Hora. It beckons you to go away with it, 
As if it some impartment did desire 
To you alone. 

Marc. Look, with what courteous action 
It waves you to a more removed ^^ ground : 
But do not go with it. 

Mora. No, by no means. 

Ham. It will not speak ; then I will follow it. 

Hora. Do not, my lord. 

Ham. Why, what should be the fear? 

I do not set my life at a pin's fee ; 
And for my soul, what can it do to that, 
Being a thing immortal as itself? 
It waves me forth again : I'll follow it. 

Hora. What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord. 
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff 
That beetles o'er his base ^^ into the sea, 
And there assume some other horrible form, 
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,^'^ 
And draw you into madness ? ^^ think of it : ^ 
The very place puts toys ^^ of desperation, 
Without more motive, into every brain 
That looks so many fathoms to the sea. 
And hears it roar beneath. 

15 Re7noved for remote, secluded, retired. 

16 Overhangs its base. So in Sidney's Arcadia : " Hills lift up their leetle 
brows, as if they would overlooke the pleasantnesse of their under prospect." 

1'^ To " deprive your sovereignty of reason " is to depose your gover7wient 
of reason, or take it away. The word was often used thus. 

18 It was anciently believed that evil spirits sometimes assumed the guise 
of deceased persons, to draw men into madness and suicide, as is here 
apprehended of the Ghost. 

19 Toys is freaks, whims, or fancies ; here meaning any sudden mad im- 
pulse to suicide. 



So HAMLET, ACT I. 

Ham. It waves me still. — 

Go on ; I'll follow thee. 

Ma7x. You shall not go, my lord. 

Ha7n, Hold off your hands ! 

Hora. Be ruled ; you shall not go. 

Ham. My fate cries out, 

And makes each petty artery ^^ in this body 
As hardy as the Nemean hon's nerve. 
Still am I call'd. — Unhand me, gentlemen ; — 

\_B7'eaking away fi^om them. 
By Heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets^i me ! 
I say, away ! — Go on ; I'll follow thee. 

\^Exeunt Ghost ajid Hamlet. 

Hora. He waxes desperate with imagination. 

Mai'c. Let's follow ; 'tis not fit thus to obey him. 

Ho7'a, Have after. — To what issue will this come ? 

Ma7'c. Something is^otten-in-t-he State of Denmark. 

Ho7'a, Heaven will direct it. 

Marc. Nay, 22 let's follow him. \_Exeufif, 

Scene V. — A7iothe7'- Pa7't of the Platform, 

E7iter the Ghost a7id Hamlet. 

Ha77t, Where wilt thou lead me ? speak ; I'll go no fur- 
ther. 
Ghost. Mark me. 
Ha77i. I will. 

Ghost, My hour is almost come, 

20 Artery, nerve, and sinew were used interchangeably in the Poet's time. 

21 The old let, now obsolete, meaning to hinder. 

22 Nay refers to Horatio's " Heaven will direct it," and means, " let us.not 
leave it to Heaven, but look after it ourselves." 



SCENE V. 



PRINCE OF DENMARK. 8 1 



When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames 
Must render up myself. 

Ham. Alas, poor Ghost ! 

GJiost. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing 
To what I shall unfold. 

Ham. Speak ; I am bound to hear. 

Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear. 

Ham. What? 

Ghost. I am thy father's spirit, 
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night, 
And for the day confined to fast in fires,^ 
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature 
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid 
To tell the secrets of my prison-house, 
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word 
Would harrow up thy soul ; freeze thy young blood ; 
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres ; 
Thy knotted and combined locks to part. 
And each particular hair to stand on end. 
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine : ^ 
But this eternal ^ blazon must not be 
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list ! 
If thou didst ever thy dear father love, — 

Ham. O God ! 

Ghost. — Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. 

Ham. Murder ! 

1 Chaucer in the Persones Tale says, " The misese of hell shall be in de- 
faute of mete and drinker So, too, in The Wyll of the Devyll: " Thou 
shalt lye in frost and fire, with sicknes and hunger!' 

2 Such is the old form of the word, and so Shakespeare always has it. 

3 The Poet repeatedly has eternal in the sense of infernal, like our Yan- 
kee 'tarnal; and such is probably the meaning here; though some think it 
means " the mysteries of eternity." 



82 HAMLET, ACT I. 

Ghost. Murder most foul, as in the best it is ; 
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural. ^ 

Ham. Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift 
As meditation or the thoughts of love, 
May sweep to my revenge. 

Ghost. I find thee apt ; 

And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed 
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,'* 
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear : 
'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,^ 
A serpent stung me ; so the whole ear of Denmark 
Is by a forged process of my death 
Rankly abused ; but know, thou noble youth, 
The serpent that did sting thy father's life 
Now wears his crown. 

Ham. O my prophetic soul !^ 

My uncle ! 

Ghost. Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, 
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, — 
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power 
So to seduce ! — won to his shameful lust 
The will of my most seeming- virtuous Queen : 

Hamlet, what a falling-off was there ! 
From me, whose love was of that dignity, 
That it went hand in hand even with the vow 

1 made to her in marriage ; and to decline 
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor 

4 Of course " Lethe wharf" is the place on the banks of the river Lethe 
where the old boatman, Charon, had his moorings, — In the preceding line, 
shouldst for wouldst. See page 48, note 11. 

5 Orchard and gaiden were synonymous, 

6 Hamlet has suspected " some foul play," and now his suspicion seems 
prophetic, or as if inspired. 



SCENE V. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 83 

To "^ tliQse of mine ! 

But .virtue, as it^iever will be moved, 

Though lewdness court it in a shape of Heaven, 

So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd^ 

Will sate itself in a celestial bed, 

And prey on garbage. 

But, soft ! methinks I scent the morning air ; 

Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, 

My custom always in the afternoon, 

Upon my secure ^ hour thy uncle stole. 

With juice of cursed hebenon^ in a vial. 

And in the porches of my ears did pour 

The leperous distilment ; whose effect ^^ 

Holds such an enmity with blood of man, 

That swift as quicksilver it courses through 

The natural gates and alleys of the body ; 11 

And with a sudden vigour it doth posset 

And curd, like eager ^^ droppings into milk, 

■^ To, again, for compared to. See page 62, note 29. 

8 Secure has the sense of the Latin securus ; ungicarded, tinsuspecting. 

9 Hebefion is probably derived from henbane, the oil of which, according 
to Pliny, dropped into the ears, disturbs the brain ; and there is sufficient 
evidence that it was held poisonous. So in Anton's Satires, 1606 : " The 
poisoiid henbane, whose cold juice doth kill." 

10 Effect for efficacy, or effectiveness ; the eifect put for the cause, 

^1 The Poet here implies as much as was then known touching the circu- 
lation of the blood. So in yullus Ccesar, ii. i : "As dear to me as are the 
ruddy drops that visit my sad heart." Harvey's great discovery was not 
published till 1628, twelve years after the Poet's death. The lawyers claim 
Shakespeare as of their house : I suspect the physicians have an equal right 
to him. 

12 Eager\\2k.'~, occurred before in the sense oi. sharp, biting. " Eager drop- 
pings " are drops of acid. — A posset is described by Randle Holme as fol- 
lows : " Hot milk poured on ale or sack, having sugar, grated bisket, and 
eggs, with other ingredients boiled in it, which goes to a curd." So that to 
posset is to coagulate or curdle. 



84 HAMLET, ACT L 

The thin and wholesome blood : so did it mine ; 

And a most instant tetter bark'd ^^ about, 

Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, 

All my smooth body. 

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand 

Of life, of crown, of Queen, at once dispatch'd : 

Cut off even in the blossom of my sins, 

Unhousell'd, disappointed, unanel'd ; ^^ 

No reckoning made, but sent to my account 

With all my imperfections on my head. 

Ham. O, horrible ! O, horrible ! most horrible ! 

GJiost. If thou hast nature ^^ in thee, bear it not ; 
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be 
A couch for luxury and damned incest. 
But, howsoever thou pursuest this act, 
Taint not thy mind,^^ nor let thy soul contrive 
Against thy mother aught : leave her to Heaven, 
And to those thorns that inlier bosom lodge 
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once ! 
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, 

13 Bark'd means formed a hark or scab. — Instant in the sense of the 
Latin instans ; urgent, importunate, itching. — The meaning of lazar-like is 
well illustrated in Paradise Lost, xi. 477-488. 

14 Unhousell'd is without having received the sacrament. Disappoijited 
is U7iappointed, unprepared. A man well furnished for an enterprise is said 
to be v^eW-appointed. Unanel'd is without extreme unction. So in Caven- 
dish's Life of Wolsey : " Then we began to put him in mind of Christ's pas- 
sion ; and sent for the abbot of the place to anneal him." These " last 
offices " were thought to have much effect in mitigating the pains of Purga- 
tory. 

15 Nature for natziral affection. A very frequent usage. 

16 This part of the injunction is well worth noting : time and manner are 
left to Hamlet ; only he is to keep himself clean from crime and from dishon- 
our : his revenge must be righteous, and according to the demands of jus- 
tice, not merely personal. 



SCENE V. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 85 

And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire : ^"^ 
Adieu, adieu, adieu ! remember me. [^^xif. 

Ham. O all you host of Heaven ! O Earth ! what else ? 
And shall I couple Hell ? O, fie ! ^^ Hold, hold, my heart ; 
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, 
But bear me stiffly up. — Remember thee ! 
Ay, thou poor Ghost, while memory holds a seat 
In this distracted globe.^^ Remember thee ! 
Yea, fi-om the table ^^ of my memory 
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records. 
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, 
That youth and observation copied there ; 
And thy commandment all alone shall live 
Within the book and volume of my brain, 
Unmix'd with baser matter : yes, by Heaven ! — • 
O most pernicious woman ! — 
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain ! 
My tables,2i — meet it is I set it down. 
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain ; 
At. least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark. — 
So, uncle, there you are.^^ — Now to my word ; 

1'^ Uneffectual hzcdMSQ it gives light without heat, does not burn. — Matin, 
properly morning-prayer, is here put for ino?-7iing. 

18 Hamlet invokes Heaven and Earth, and then asks whether he shall in- 
voke Hell also. " O, fie 1 " refers to the latter, and implies a strong nega- 
tive. 

19 By this globe Hamlet means his head. 

20 Table for what we call tablet. — Saws is sayings; pressures, itnpres- 
sions. 

21 " Tables, or books, or registers for memory of things " were used in 
Shakespeare's time by all ranks of persons, and carried in the pocket; 
what we call meinora7idum-books. 

22 This, I think, has commonly been taken in too literal and formal a 
way, as if Hamlet were carefully writing down the axiomatic saying he has 
just c^^tered. I prefer Professor Warder's view of the inatter : " Hamlet 



86 HAMLET, ACT I. 

It is Adieu, adieu! remetnber me: 
I have sworn't. 

Hora. [ Within^ My lord, my lord, — 

MarC. [ Within?^ Lord Hamlet, — 

Hora. [ IVithinJ] Heaven secure him ! 

Marc. [ Within^ So be it ! 

Hora. [ Within^ Illo, ho, ho, my lord ! 

Ham. Hillo, ho, ho, boy ! come, bird, come.^^ 

Enter Horatio aiid Marcellus. 

Marc. How is't, my noble lord? 

Hora. What news, my lord? 

Ham. O, wonderful ! 
Hora. Good my lord, tell it. 
Ham. No ; you'll reveal it. 
Hora. Not I, my lord, by Heaven. 
Marc. Nor I, my lord. 

Ham. How say you, then? would heart of man once 
think it ? — 
But you'll be secret ? 
Hora. "I 
M^j^c. j ^^' ^^ Heaven, my lord. 

Ham. There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark 
But he's an arrant knave. ^"^ 

pulls out his tablets, and jabs the point of his pencil once or twice into the 
leaf, because he cannot do the same to the King with his sword, as he 
would like to do, — nothing further; only such marks, such a sign, does he 
make. That stands for ' So, uncle, there you are ! ' And although he says 
he must write it down for himself, he does not literally write ; that does not 
accord with his mood and situation." 

23 This is the call which falconers use to their hawk in the air when they 
would have him come down to them. 

'^^4 Dr. Isaac Ray, a man of large science and ripe experience in the treat- 
ment of insanity, says of Hamlet's behaviour in this scene, that " it betrays 



SCENE V. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 87 

Hora. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the 
grave 
To tell us this. 

Ham. Why, right ; you are i' the right ; 

And so, without more circumstance^-^ at all, 
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part : 
You, as your business and desire shall point you, — 
For every man hath business and desire. 
Such as it is ; — and, for mine own poor part. 
Look you, I'll go pray. 

Ho7'a. These are but wild and whirling words, my lord. 

Ham. I'm sorry they offend you, heartily ; 
Yes, faith, heartily. 

Hora. There's no offence, my lord. 

Ham. Yes, by Saint Patrick,^'^ but there is, Horatio, 
And much offence too. Touching this vision here, 
It is an honest ghost,^^ that let me tell you ; 
For your desire to know what is between us, 
O'ermaster't as you may.^^ And now, good friends, 
As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers, 
Give me one poor request. 

the excitement of delirium, — the wandering of a mind reeling under the 
first stroke of disease." 

25 Circumstance is sometimes used for circumlocution. So in Othello, i. 
I : " A bombast cij-cumstance horribly stuff 'd with epithets of war." But it 
was also used for circumstantial detail; and such is probably the meaning 
here. 

26 Warburton has ingeniously defended Shakespeare for making the 
Danish Prince swear by St. Patrick, by observing that the whole northern 
world had their learning from Ireland. 

27 Hamlet means that the Ghost is a real ghost, just what it appears to 
be, and not " the Devil " in " a pleasing shape," as Horatio had apprehended 
it to be. See page 79, note 18. 

28 That is, o'ermaster your desire; " subdue it as you best can." 



88 HAMLET, ACT I. 

Hora. What is't, my lord ? we will. 

Ham. Never make known what you have seen to-night. 

Hora. ] , , 
■nr r My lord, we will not. 
Marc. ) ^ ' 

Ham. Nay, but swear't. 

Hora. In faith, my lord, not I. 

Marc. Nor I, my lord, in faith. 

Hai7i. Upon my sword. 

Marc. We've sworn, my lord, already .^^ 

Ham. Indeed, upon my sword, indeed. 

Ghost. \_Beneathr\ Swear. 

Ham. Ha, ha, boy ! say'st thou so ? art thou there, true- 
penny ? -^"^ — 
Come on, — you hear this fellow in the cellarage, — 
Consent to swear. 

Hora. Propose the oath, my lord. 

Ham. Never to speak of this that you have seen : 
Swear by my sword. 

Ghost. \_Bcneath.~\ Swear. 

Ham. Hie et itbique ! then we'll shift our ground. — 
Come hither, gentlemen. 
And lay your hands again upon my sword. 
Never to speak of this that you have heard : 
Swear by my sword. 

Ghost. \_Beneath.~\ Swear. 

Ha?7i. Well said, old mole ! canst work i' the ground so 
fast? 

29 The oath they have already sworn is itifaitk. But this has not enough 
of ritual solemnity in it, to satisfy Hamlet. The custom of swearing by the 
sword, or rather by the cross at the hilt of it, is very ancient. The Saviou*-'"? 
name was sometimes inscribed on the handle. So that swearing by one's 
sword was the most solemn oath a Christian soldier could take. 

30 True-penny is an old familiar term for a right honest fellow. 



SCENE V. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 89 

A worthy pioneer P^ — Once more remove, good friends. 

Hora. O day and night ! but this is wondrous strange. 

Ham. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. 
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy .^^ 
But come : 

Here, as before, never, so help you Mercy, 
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, — ■ 
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet 
To put an antic disposition on,^^ — 
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, 
With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake, 
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, 
as. Well, well, we know ; or. We coidd, an if ^^ we would ; 
or, If we list to speak; or, Thei^e be, an if they might; 
Or such ambiguous giving-out, to note 
That you know aught of me : — this not to do. 
So Grace and Mercy at your most need help you. 
Swear. 

31 Alluding to one of the offices of military engineers, which is to pioneer 
an army ; that is, to go before and clear the road. 

32 Strictly speaking, ;/(?2^r is redundant here. Hamlet means any philoso- 
phy. The Poet often uses the pronouns in that way. So in v. i, of this 
play : " And /02^r water is a sore decayer of _)/<9«r whoreson dead body." In 
the text, however, I suspect that your is meant to convey a mild sneer at 
philosophy, which has sometimes been as arrogant as science is in some of 
her modern representatives. 

33 This has been taken as proving that Hamlet's " antic disposition " is 
merely assumed for a special purpose. But our ripest experts in the matter 
are far from regarding it so. They tell us that veritable madmen are some^ 
times inscrutably cunning in arts for disguising their state ; saying, in effect, 
" To be sure, you may find me acting rather strangely at times, but you 
must not think me crazy ; I know what I am about, and have a purpose in it." 

34 An if is merely an old reduplication, and is equivalent simply to if. 
So the Poet uses if or an, or an if indifferently. 



90 HAMLET, ACT II. 

Ghost. \_Beneath.'] Swear. 

\_They kiss the hilt <?;^ Hamlet's sword. 

Ham. Rest, rest, perturbed spirit ! — So, gentlemen, 
With all my love I do commend me to you ; 
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is 
May do t' express his love and friending to you, 
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together ; 
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray. 
The time is out of joint : — O cursed spite, 
That ever I was born to set it right ! — ■ 
Nay, come ; let's go together. \Exeunt, 



ACT II. 

Scene I. — A Rooin in Polonius^s House. 
Enter Polonius and Reynaldo. 

Polo. Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo. 

Reyn. I will, my lord. 

Polo. You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo, 
Before you visit him, to make inquiry 
Of his behaviour. 

Reyn. My lord, I did intend it. 

Polo. Marry, well said, very well said. Look you, sir, 
Inquire me first what Danskers ^ are in Paris, 
And how, and who ; what means, and where they keep j^ 
What company, at what expense ; and finding, 
By this encompassment and drift of question, 

1 Dansker'is Dane ; Dansk being the ancient name of Denmark. — Here 
me is used very much ■asyourm. the preceding scene. See page 89, note 32. 

2 The Poet repeatedly uses keep in the sense of lodge or dwell. 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 9 1 

That they do know my son, come you more nearer 

Than your particular demands will touch it : ^ 

Take you, as 'twere, some distant knowledge of him ; 

As thus, / know his father and his friends, 

And in part him ; — do you mark this, Reynaldo ? 

Reyn. Ay, very well, my lord. 

Polo. And in pai^t him ; but, you may say, not well : 
But, ift be he I mean, he^s very wild ; 
Addicted so and so. And there put on him 
What forgeries you please ; marry, none so rank 
As may dishonour him ; take heed of that ; 
But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips 
As are companions noted and most known 
To youth and Hberty. 

Reyn. As gaming, my lord? 

Polo. Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, 
Quarrelling, drabbing ; you may go so far. 

Reyn. My lord, that would dishonour him. 

Polo. Faith, no ; as you may season it in the charge. 
You must not put another ^ scandal on him 
Than he is open to incontinency ; 

That's not my meaning : but breathe his faults so quaintly,^ 
That they may seem the taints of liberty ; 
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind ; 

3 This seems illogical, and would be so in any mouth but a politician's, 
as implying that general inquiries would come to the point faster than par- 
ticular ones. But here, again, your is used as explained in note 32, page 89. 
The scheme here laid down is, to steal upon the truth by roundabout 
statements and questions ; or, as it is afterwards said, " By indirections find 
directions out." 

4 Another Tiwxsi here be taken as equivalent to a further. 

5 Quaintly, from the Latin comptus, properly means elegantly, but is here 
used in the sense oi adroitly or ingeniously. 



92 HAMLET, ACT II. 

A savageness in unreclaimed blood, 
Of general assault.^ 

Reyn. But, my good lord, — 

Polo. Wherefore should you do this ? 

Reyn. Ay, my lord, 

I would know that. 

Polo. Marry, sir, here's my drift ; 

And, I beheve, it is a fetch of warrant -J 
You laying these slight sullies on my son, 
As 'twere a thing a little soil'd i' the working, 
Mark you, 

Your party in converse, him you would sound, 
Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes 
The youth you breathe of guilty,® be assured 
He closes with you in this consequence : 
Good si?^, or so ; or friend, or ge7itle?nan, — 
According to the phrase or the addition 
Of man and country ; — 

Reyn. Very good, my lord. 

Polo. And then, sir, does he this, — he does — what was 
I about to say ? — By the Mass,^ I was about to say some- 
thing : — where did I leave ? 

Reyn. At closes in the consequence ; at friend or so, and 
gentleman. 

Polo. At closes in the consequeiice, — ay, marry ; 
He closes with you thus : I hiow the gentleman ; 

6 A wildness of untamed blood, such as youth is generally assailed by. 
''^ " A fetch of warrant " is an allowable stratagem or artifice. 

8 Having at a7iy time seen the youth you speak of guilty in the forenamed 
vices. — "Closes with you in this consequence " means, apparently, a^r<?(?j 
with you in this conclusion. — Addition again for title. 

9 Mass is the old name of the Lord's Supper, and is still used by the 
Roman Catholics. It was often sworn by, as in this instance. 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. > 93 

I saw him yesterday, or ''tother day, 

Or then, or then ; with such or such ; and, as you say, 

There was he gaming, there o^e?^took in''s rouse, 

There falling out at tennis : or, perchance, 

/ saw him enter such a house of sale. 

See you now. 

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth ; ^^ 

And thus do we of wisdom and of reach. 

With windlaces and with assays of bias,!^ 

By indirections find directions out : 

So, by my former lecture and advice. 

Shall you my son. You have me, have you not ? ^^ 

Reyn. My lord, I have. 

Polo. God b' wi' you ! ^^ fare you well. 

Reyn. Good my lord ! 

Polo. Observe his inclination in yourself.^^ 

If* The shrewd old wire-puller is fond of angling arts. The carp is a 
species of fish. 

11 " Of wisdom and of reach " is here equivalent to hy amning and over- 
reaching. — Windlaces is here used in the sense of taking a winding, circuit- 
ous, or roundabout course to a thing, instead of going directly to it ; or, as 
we sometimes say, " beating about the bush," instead of coming straight to 
the point. This is shown by a late writer in the Edinburgh Review, who 
quotes two passages in illustration of it from Golding's translation of Ovid, 
which is known to have been one of the Poet's books. Here is one of the 
quotations : — 

The winged god, beholding them returning in a troupe, 
Continu'd not directly forth, but gan me down to stoupe, 
And fetch' d a wmdlass round about. 
"Assays of bias "are trials of inclination. A bias is a weight in one side ot 
a bowl, which keeps it from rolling straight to the mark, as in ninepins. 

12 " You tinderstand me, do you not ? " 

13 The old phrase, " God be with you," is here in the process of abbrevi- 
ation to what we now use, — " Good by." 

14 " Use your own eyes upon him, as well as learn from others." Or the 
meaning may be, " comply with his inclinations in order to draw him out." 
Observe sometimes has this sense of yielding to, and so flatter itig. 



94 HAMLET. ACT II. 

Reyn. I shall, my lord. 

Polo. And let him ply his music.^^ 

Reyn. Well, my lord. 

Polo. Farewell ! — \_Exit Reynaldo. 

Enter Ophelia. 

How now, Ophelia ! what's the matter? 

Ophe. O, my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted ! 

Polo. With what, i' the name of God? 

Ophe. My lord, as I was sewing in my closet. 
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all mibraced j ^^ 
No hat upon his head ; his stockings foul'd, 
Ungarter'd, and down-gyved to his ankle ; ^^ 
Pale as his shirt ; his knees knocking each other ; 
And with a look so piteous in purport 
As if he had been loosed out of Hell 
To speak of horrors, — he comes before me. 

Polo. Mad for thy love ? 

Ophe. My lord, I do not know ; 

But, truly, I do fear it. 

Polo. What said he ? ■ 

Ophe. He took me by the wrist and held me hard ; 
Then goes he to the length of all his arm. 
And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow, 
He falls to such perusal of my face 
As he would draw it.^^ Long time stay'd he so ; 
At last, — a little shaking of mine arm, 
And thrice his head thus waving up and down, — 

15 " Eye him sharply, but slyly, and let him fiddle his secrets all out." 

16 Unbraced is the same as our unbuttoned. 

1" Hanging down like the loose cincture that confines the fetters or gyves 
round the ankles. 

18 " To such a study of my face as if he would make a picture of it." 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 95 

He raised a sigh so piteous and profound, 
That it did seem to shatter all his bulk/'^ 
And end his being : that done, he lets me go ; 
And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd. 
He seem'd to iind his way without his eyes ; 
For out o' doors he went without their help. 
And, to the last, bended their hght on me. 

Pc>/o. Come, go with me : I will go seek the King. 
This is the very ecstasy ^^ of love. 
Whose violent property fordoes ^i itself. 
And leads the will to desperate undertakings, 
As oft as any passion under heaven 
That does afflict our natures. I am sorry, — 
What, have you given him any hard words of late ? 

Oj>/ie. No, my good lord ; but, as you did command, 
I did repel his letters, and denied 
His access to me. 

I'o/o. That hath made him mad. 

I'm sorry that with better heed and judgment 
I had not quoted him.22 I fear'd he did but trifle, 
And meant to wreck thee ; but beshrew^^ my jealousy ! 
By Heaven, it is as proper to our age 
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions,^^ 
As it is common for the younger sort 

19 Here hi/k is put for breast. The usage was common. 
2" All through this play, ecstasy is madness. It was used for any violent 
perturbation of mind. 

21 Fordo was the same as imdo or destroy. 

22 To quote is to note, to 7nark, or observe. 

23 Beshrew was much used as a mild form of imprecation ; about thb 
same as co7ifound it! or, a plague upon it/ 

24 In this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the skeleton of 
his former skill in state-craft, hunts the trail of policy at a dead scent, sup- 
plied by the weak fever-smell in his own nostrils. — COLERIDGE. 



96 HAMLET, 



ACT II. 



To lack discretion.^^ Come, go we to the King : 

This must be known ; which, being kept close, might move 

More grief to hide than hate to utter love.26 \Exeiint 

Scene II. — A Room in the Castle. 

Enter the King, the Queen, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, 
and Attendants. 

King. Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 1 
Moreover that ^ we much did long to see you. 
The need we have to use you did provoke 
Our hasty sending. Something have you heard 
Of Hamlet's transformation ; so I call it. 
Since nor th' exterior nor the inward man 
Resembles that it was. What it should be. 
More than his father's death, that thus hath put him 
So much from th' understanding of himself, 
I cannot dream of. I entreat you both. 
That, being of so young days brought up with him. 
And since so neighbour'd to his youth and humour,^ 
That you vouchsafe your rest here in our Court 
Some little time ; so by your companies 
To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather, 
So much as from occasion you may glean, 

25 We old men are as apt to overreach ourselves with our own policy, as 
the young are to miscarry through inconsideration. 

26 The sense is rather obscure, but appears to be, " By keeping Hamlet's 
love secret, we may cause more of grief to others, than of hatred on his part 
by disclosing it." The Poet sometimes strains language pretty hard in or- 
der to close a scene with a rhyme. 

1 Moreover that for besides that. Not so elsewhere, I think. 

2 And having since had so near an opportunity of studying his inclina- 
tion and character during his youth. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 97 

Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus, 
That, open'd, hes within our remedy. 

Queen. Good gentlemen, he hath much talk'd of you j 
And sure I am two men there are not hving 
To whom he more adheres. If it will please you 
To show us so much gentry ^ and good will 
As to expend your time with us awhile. 
For the supply and profit of our hope,^ 
Your visitation shall receive such thanks 
As fits a king's remembrance. 

Rosen. Both your Majesties 

Might, by the sovereign power you have of us. 
Put your dread pleasures more into command 
Than to entreaty. 

Guild. But we both obey ; 

And here give up ourselves, in the full bent, 
To lay our service freely at your feet, 
To be commanded. 

King. Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstem. 

Queen. Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz : 
And I beseech you instantly to visit 
My too-much-changed son. — Go, some of you. 
And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is. 

Guild, Heavens make our presence and our practices 
Pleasant and helpful to him ! 

Queen. Ay, amen ! 

\_Exeunt Rosen., Guilden., and some Attendants. 
Enter Polonius. 

Polo. Th' ambassadors from Norway, my good lord, 
Are joyfully return'd. 

s Gentry for courtesy, gentleness, or good-breeding, 

4 " The supply and profit" is ihe feeding and realizing. 



98 HAMLET, 



ACT II. 



Kijig. Thou still hast been the father of good news. 

Polo. Have I, my lord ? Assure you, my good liege, 
I hold my duty, as I hold my soul, 
Both to my God and to my gracious King : ^ 
And I do think — or else this brain of mine 
Hunts not the trail of policy so sure 
As it hath used to do — that I have found 
The very cause of Hamlet^s lunacy. 

King. O, speak of that ; that do I long to hear. 

Polo. Give, first, admittance to th' ambassadors ; 
My news shall be the fruit to that great feast. 

King. Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in. — 

\_Exit POLONIUS. 

He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found 
The head and source of all your son's distemper. 

Queen. I doubt ^ it is no other but the main, — 
His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage. 

King. Well, we shall sift him. — 

Re-enter Polonius, with Voltimand and Cornelius. 

Welcome, my good friends ! 
Say, Voltimand, what from our brother Norway? 
Volt. Most fair return of greetings and desires. 
Upon our first, he sent out to suppress 
His nephew's levies ; which to hiril appear'd 
To be a preparation 'gainst the Polack ; 
But, better look'd into, he truly found 
It was against your Highness : whereat grieved, — 
That so his sickness, age, and impotence 
Was falsely borne in hand,'^ — sends out arrests 

5 I hold my duty both to my God and to my King, as I do my soul. 

6 Doubt, again, for suspect or fear. See page 68, note 46. 

7 To bear in hand is to delude by false assurances or expectations. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 99 

On Fortinbras ; which he, in brief, obeys ; 

Receives rebuke from Norway j and, in fine, 

Makes vow before his uncle never more 

To give th' assay of arms against your Majesty. 

Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy, 

Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee ; ^ 

And his commission to employ those soldiers, 

So levied as before, against the Polack : 

With an entreaty, herein further shown, [ Giving a paper. 

That it might please you to give quiet pass 

Through your dominions for this enterprise, 

On such regards of safety and allowance ^ 

As therein are set down. 

King. It likes us ^^ well ; 

And at our more consider'd time ^^ we'll read. 
Answer, and think upon this business : 
Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour. 
Go to your rest ; at night we'll feast together : 
Most welcome home ! \_Exeunt Voltimand and Cornelius. 

Polo. This business is well ended. — 

My liege, and madam, to expostulate ^^ 
What majesty should be, what duty is, 
Why day is day, night night, and time is time, 
Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time. 
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, 

8 Fee was often used for fee-simple, which is the strongest tenure in 
English law, and means an estate held in absolute right. 

9 That is, on such pledges of safety to the country, and on such terms of 
permission. The passage of an army through a country is apt to cause 
great trouble and damage to the people. 

1'^ " It likes us " for " it pleases us," or " we like it." Often so. 
ii That is, " when we have had time iox further consideration^ The Poet 
has several like expressions in this play. 

12 Expostulate in the Latin sense of a7-gue or discuss. 



lOO HAMLET, ACT II. 

And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, 
I will be brief : Your noble son is mad : 
Mad call I it ; for, to define true madness, 
What is't but to be nothing else but mad? 
But let that go. 

Queen. More matter, with less art. 

Polo. Madam, I swear I use no art at all. 
That he is mad, 'tis true : 'tis true 'tis pity ; 
And pity 'tis 'tis true : a fooHsh figure ; 
But farewell it, for I will use no art. 
Mad let us grant him, then : and now remains 
That we find out the cause of this effect, — 
Or rather say, the cause of this defect. 
For this effect defective comes by cause : 
Thus it remains, and the remainder thus. 
Perpend : ^^ 

I have a daughter, — have while she is mine, — 
Who, in her duty and obedience, mark, 
Hath given me this : now gather, and surmise. 
[Reads.] To the celestial and my souVs idol, the most beauti- 
fied Ophelia : — 
That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase ; beautified is a vile phrase : 
but you shall hear. Thus : 
[Reads.] In her excellent white bosom, these}^ d^c. 

Queen. Came this from Hamlet to her? 

Polo. Good madam, stay awhile ; I will be faithful. 
[Reads.] Doubt thou the sta7's are fi7'e ; 

Doubt that the Sun doth move ; 

13 Perpend is weigh or co7isider. 

14 The v^oxdL.these was usually added at the end of the superscription of 
letters. Hamlet's letter is somewhat in the euphuistic style which was fash- 
ionable in the Poet's time. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. lOI 

Doubt ^^ truth to be ajiar; 
But never doubt I love, 

O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers. I have not 
art to reckon ^^ my groans ; but that I love thee best, O most 
best, believe it. Adieu. 

Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this 

machine is to him,^^ Hamlet. 
This in obedience hath my daughter shown me ; 
And, more above, hath his soUcitings, 
As they fell out by time, by means, and place, 
All given to mine ear. 

King. But how hath she 

Received his love? 

Polo. What do you think of me ? 

Kinz. As of a man faithful and honourable. 

Polo. I would fain prove so. But what might you think, — 
When I had seen this hot love on the wing, 
(As I perceived it, I must tell you that, 
Before my daughter told me,) — -what might you, 
Or my dear Majesty your Queen here, think, 
If I had play'd the desk or table-book ; ^^ 
Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb ; ^^ 
Or look'd upon this love with idle sight ; — 



15 Doubt, again, as note 6. In the two preceding lines the word has its 
ordinary sense. 

16 Hamlet is tacitly quibbling : he first uses numbers in the sense of 
verses, and here implies the other sense. 

'^'^ That is, " while he is living." Machine for body. 

18 By keeping dark about the matter. A desk or table-book does not 
prate of what it contains. A table-book is a case or set of tablets, to carry 
in the pocket, and write memoranda upon. See page 85, note 21. 

19 " If I had given my heart a hint to be mute about their passion." 
" Cnnniventia, a winking at ; a sufferance ; a feigning not to see or know." 



I02 HAMLET, ACT II. 

What might you think? No, I went round ^^ to work; 
And my young mistress thus I did bespeak : 
Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star ;^^ 
This must not be : and then I precepts gave her, 
That she siiould lock herself from his resort, 
Admit no messengers, receive no tokens. 
Which done, she took the fruits of my advice ; 
And he, repulsed, — a short tale to make, — 
Fell into a sadness ; then into a fast ; 
Thence to a watch ; thence into a weakness ; 
Thence to a hghtness ; and, by this declension. 
Into the madness wherein now he raves. 
And all we mourn for. 

King. Do you think 'tis this ? 

Queen. It may be, very likely. 

Polo. Hath there been such a time — I'd fain know that — 
That I have positively said 'Tis so, 
When it proved otherwise ? 

King. Not that I know. 

Polo. \Pointing to his head and shoulder.~\ Take this 
from this, if this be otherwise. 
If circumstances lead me, I will find 
Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed 
Within the centre.^^ 

King. How may we try it further ? 

Polo. You know, sometimes he walks for hours together 
Here in the lobby. 

2" To be ro2md is to be plain, downright, ontspokett. 

21 Not within thy destiny ; alluding to the supposed influence of the stars 
on the fortune of life. 

22 Ce?it?-e here means, no doubt, the Earth, which, in the old astronomy, 
Was held to be literally the centre of the solar system. The Poet has the 
Vvord repeatedly in that sense. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 103 

Queen. So he does indeed. 

Polo. At such a time I'll loose my daughter to him : 
Be you and I behind an arras ^^ then ; 
Mark the encounter : if he love her not, 
And be not from his reason fall'n thereon, 
Let me be no assistant for a State, 
But keep a farm and carters.. 

King. We will try it. 

Queen. But look where sadly the poor wretch ^^ comes 
reading. 

Polo. Away, I do beseech you, both away : 
I'll board 2^ him presently. — 

\_Exeimt King, Queen, and Attendants. 

Enter Hamlet, I'eading. 

O, give me leave : 
How does my good Lord Hamlet ? 
Ham. Well, God-'a-mercy. 
Polo. Do you know me, my lord ? 
Hani. Excellent well ; you're a fishmonger .^^ 
Polo. Not I, my lord. 

Hani. Then I would you were so honest a man. 
Polo. Honest, my lord ! 

23 In Shakespeare's time the chief rooms of houses were hned with tapes- 
try hangings, which Avere suspended on frames, some distance from the walls, 
to keep them from being rotted by the damp. These tapestries were called 
arras from the town Arras, in France, where they were made, 

24 Wretch was the strongest term of endearment in the language ; gen- 
erally implying, however, a dash of pity. So in Othello, iii. 3, the hero, 
speaking of Desdemona, exclaims in a rapture of tenderness, " Excellent 
wretch, perdition catch my soul, but I do love thee ! " 

25 To board him is to accost or address him. 

26 Fishmonger m.Q2sv\. an angler as well as a dealer in fish. Hamlet prob- 
ably means that Polonius has come to fish out his secret. 



I04 HAMLET, ACT II. 

Ham, Ay, sir ; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be 
one man pick'd out of ten thousand. 

Folo. That's very true, my lord. 

Ha77t. For if the Sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being 
a good kissing carrion,^" — Have you a daughter ? 

Polo. I have, my lord. 

Ham. Let her not walk i' the sun : conception is a bless- 
ing ; but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look 
to't. 

Polo. How say you by thatP^s — [Aside.'] Still harping 
on my daughter : yet he knew me not at first ; he said I was a 
fishmonger : he is far gone, far gone : and truly in my youth 
I suffered much extremity for love ; very near this. I'll 
speak to him again. — What do you read, my lord ? 

Ham. Words, words, words. 

Polo. What is the matter, my lord ? 

Ham. Between who ? 

Polo. I mean, the matter that you read, my lord. 

Ham. Slanders, sir : for the satirical rogue says here that 
old men have gray beards ; that their faces are wrinkled ; 
their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum ; and 
that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most 
weak hams : all which, sir, though I most powerfully and 

27 " A good kissing carrion " is, no doubt, a carrion good for kissing, or 
good to kiss. So in The Merry Wives, v. 5, we have the compound " kissing- 
comfits," which were candies flavoured so as to perfume the breath, and 
thus render the Hps sweet for kissing, or to kiss. And so we often say " good 
hay-making weather," meaning, of course, weather good for hay-making, or 
good to make hay. In my first edition of Shakespeare, 1856, I so explained 
the passage ; but afterwards, in my School edition of Hamlet, 1870, 1 receded 
from that explanation, out of deference to the judgment of others. I am 
now obliged to Professor Hiram Corson for recalling me to it. 

28 " How say you by that ? " is " What mean you by that ? " 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 05 

potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty ^^ to have it thus 
set down ; for you yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if 
like a crab you could go backward. ^^ 

Polo. \_Aside.'\ Though this be madness, yet there is 
method in't. — Will you walk out of the air, my lord ? 

Ham. Into my grave? 

Polo. Indeed, that is out o' the air. — \_Asider\ How 
pregnant "^^ sometimes his replies are ! a happiness that often 
madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so pros- 
perously be deliver'd of. I will leave him, and suddenly 
contrive the means of meeting between him and my daugh- 
ter. — My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my 
leave of you. 

Hain. You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will 
more willingly part withal ; — \^Aside.'\ except my life, except 
my hfe, except my hfe. 

Polo. Fare you well, my lord. 

Ham. These tedious old fools ! 

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

Polo. You go to seek the Lord Hamlet ; there he is. 

Rosen. \To Polo.] God save you, sir ! [^x// Polonius. 

Guild. My honour'd lord ! 

Rosen. My most dear lord ! 

Ham. My excellent-good friends ! How dost thou, 
Guildenstern ? — Ah, Rosencrantz ! — Good lads, how do ye 
both? 

Rosen. As the indifferent ^^ children of the Earth. 

29 Shakespeare sometimes uses honesty with the sense of the adjective 
right, or honourable. 

3i> Thiat is, "if you could turn your life backward, and grow young." 

31 Pregnaftt, here, is pithy, _/;/// of meaTiing, or of pertbiency. 

82 Iiidlfferetit, here, has the sense of middling, — tolerably well off. 



Io6 HAMLET, ACT II. 

Guild, Happy, in that we are not over-happy ; 
On Fortune's cap we're not the very button. 

Ham. Nor the soles of her shoe? 

Rosen. Neither, my lord. 

Ham. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of 
her favours ? What's the news ? 

Rosen. None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest. 

Ham. Then is doomsday near : but your news is not true. 
Let me question more in particular : What have you, my 
good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune, that she 
sends you to prison hither? 

Guild. Prison, my lord ! 

Ham. Denmark's a prison. 

Rosen. Then is the world one. 

Ham. A goodly one ; in which there are many confines, 
wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst. 

Rosen. We think not so, my lord. 

Ham. Why, then 'tis none to you ; for there is nothing 
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so : to me it is a 
prison. 

Rosen. Why, then your ambition makes it one ; 'tis too 
narrow for your mind. 

Ham. O God, I could be bounded in a nut-shell, and 
count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have 
bad dreams. 

Guild. Which dreams indeed are ambition ; for the very 
substance of the ambitious ^^ is merely the shadow of a 
dream. 

33 This is obscure : but " the very substance of the ambitious " probably 
means the substance of that which the ambitious pursue, not that of which 
they are made. The obscurity grows from an uncommon use of the objec- 
tive genitive. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 107 

Ha7n. A dream itself is but a shadow. 

Rosen. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a 
quality, that it is but a shadow's shadow. 

Ham. Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs 
and outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we to 
the Court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.34 

Rosen. ) „ . 

r- -7 7 \ We 11 wait upon you. 

yj- III let. ) 

Ham. No such matter : I will not sort you with the rest 
of my servants ; for, to speak to you like an honest man, I 
am most dreadfully attended.^^ But, in the beaten way of 
friendship, what make you at Elsinore ? ^^ 

Rosen. To visit you, my lord ; no other occasion. 

Ham. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks ; but 
I thank you : and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear 
at a halfpenny. Were you not sent for ? Is it your own in- 
clining ? Is it a free visitation ? Come, deal justly with me : 
come, come ; nay, speak. • 

Guild. What should we say, my lord ? 

Ham. Why, anything, — but to the purpose. You were 
sent for ; and there is a kind of confession in your looks 
which your modesties have not craft enough to colour.^^ I 
know the good King and Queen have sent for you. 

34 Hamlet is here playing or fencing with words, and seems to lose him- 
self in the riddles he is making. The meaning is any thing but clear ; per- 
haps was not meant to be understood. But bodies is no doubt put for 
substance or substances. And perhaps the sense will come thus : Substance 
and shadow are antithetic and correlative terms, and Hamlet assumes beggar 
and ki.??g \o be so too. As a shadow must be cast by some substance; so 
our beggars are the substances antithetic and correlative to the shadows 
cast by them. All which infers that our kings and heroes are but the shad- 
ows of our beggars. — Fay is merely a diminutive oi faith. 

35 Referring, perhaps, to the " bad dreams " spoken of a little before. 

36 " What is your business at Elsinore ? " See page 63, note 36. 
87 To colour is to disguise, to concjal. 



I08 HAMLET, ACT II. 

Rosen. To what end, my lord? 

Ham. That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, 
by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our 
youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by 
what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, 
be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for, or 
no. 

Rose7i. \_Aside to Guilden.] What say you ? 

Hain. \_Aside7\ Nay, then I have an eye of you.-^^ — If 
you love me, hold not off. 

Guild. My lord, we were sent for. 

Ha77i. I will tell you why ; so shall my anticipation pre- 
vent your discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen 
moult no feather.39 I have of late — but wherefore I know 
not — lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises ; 
and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this 
goodly frame, the Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory ; 
this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave ^^ 
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with gold- 
en fire, — why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul 
and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of 
work is man ! how noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties ! 
in form and moving how express and admirable ! in action 
how Hke an angel ! in apprehension how like a god ! the 

38 " I will watch you sharply." Of for on ; a common usage. 

39 Hamlet's fine sense of honour is well shown in this. He will not tempt 
them to any breach of confidence ; and he means that, by telling them the 
reason, he will forestall and prevent their disclosure of it. — Moult is an old 
word for change ; used especially of birds when casting their feathers. So 
in Bacon's Natiaul History : " Some birds there be, that upon their moult- 
ing do turn colour ; as robin-redbreasts, after their moulting, grow red 
again by degrees." 

40 Here, as often, brave is grand, splendid. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. IO9 

beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals ! And yet, to 
me, what is this quintessence of dust ? man delights not me ; 
no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to 
say so. 

Rosen. My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts. 

Ham. Why did you laugh then, when I said man delights 
not me ? 

Rosen. To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, 
what lenten entertainment "^^ the players shall receive from 
you : we coted"^- them on the way, and hither are they com- 
ing to offer you service. 

Ham. He that plays the king shall be welcome, — his 
Majesty shall have tribute of me ; the adventurous knight 
shall use his foil and target \ the lover shall not sigh gratis ; 
the humorous man '^'^ shall end his part in peace ; the Clown 
shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickle o' the sear ; '*^ 

41 '' Lentett entertainment" is entertainment for the season of Lent, when 
players were not allowed to perform in public, in London. 

42 To cote is, properly, to overpass, to outstrip. So Scott, in Old Mortality^ 
note J. : " This horse was so iieet, and its rider so expert, that they are said 
to have outstripped and coted, or turned, a hare upon the Bran-Law." 

43 Humorous man here means a man made unhappy by his own crotch- 
ets. Humour was used for any wa)^ward, eccentric impulse causing a man 
to be full of ups and downs, or of flats and sharps. Such characters were 
favourites on the stage. The melancholy Jaques in As You Like It is an 
instance. 

44 Tickle is delicate, sensitive, easily moved. Sear, also spelt sere and 
serre, is the catch of a gun-lock, that holds the hammer cocked or half- 
cocked. Here, as often, o\ that is, of, is equivalent to in respect of. The 
image is of a gunlock with the hammer held so lightly by the catch as to go 
off at the slightest pressure on the trigger ; and the general idea is of per- 
sons so prone to laughter, that the least touch or gleam of wit is enough to 
make them explode. The same thought occurs in The Tempest, ii. i : " I 
did it to minister occasion to these gentlemen, who are of such sensible and 
nimble lungs, that they always use to laugh at nothing." Here, as in many 
other places, sensible is sensitive. In the text, Hamlet is slurring the extern- 



no HAMLET, ACT II. 

and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank-verse 
shall halt for't.-*^ What players are they ? 

Rosen. Even those you were wont to take delight in, the 
tragedians of the city. 

Ham. How chances it they travel? their residence, both 
in reputation and profit, was better both ways.^^ 

Rosen. I think their innovation comes by the means of 
the late inhibition.^^ 

Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they did when 
I was in the city? are they so follow'd? 

Rosen. No, indeed, they are not. 

Ham. How comes it? do they grow rusty? 

Rosen. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace ; 
but there is, sir, an eyrie of children, little eyases,^^ that cry 
out on the top of question,^^ and are most tyrannically 

porized witticisms of the Clowns, by a sort of ironical praise. For this 
explanation I am indebted to the " Clarendon Press Series," which quotes 
from Howard's Defensatlve against the Poyson of supposed Prophecies, 1620: 
" Discovering the moods and humors of the vulgar sort to be so loose and 
tickle of the seared 

45 That is, the poet's feet shall go lame from her overworking them. 

46 The London theatrical companies, when not allowed to play in the 
city, were wont to travel about the country, and exercise their craft in the 
towns. This was less reputable, and at the same time brought less pay, than 
residing in the city. 

47 Referring, no doubt, to an order of the Privy Council, issued in June, 
1600. By this order the players were itihibited from acting in or near the 
city during the season of Lent, besides being very much restricted at all 
other seasons, and hence " chances it they travel," or stroll into the country. 

48 Eyrie, from eyren, eggs, properly means a brood, but sometimes a nest. 
Eyases are unfledged hawks, 

49 " Cry out on the top of question " means, I have no doubt, exclaim 
against those who are at the top of their profession, who stand highest in the 
public esteem, who are most talked or conversed about as having surpassed 
all others. Shakespeare uses cry out on, or cry on, nearly if not quite always 
in the sense of exclaim against, or cry down. So in the last scene of this 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 1 1 

clapped for't : these are now the fashion ; and so berattle ^^ 
the common stages, — so they call them, — that many wear- 
ing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come 
thither.5i 

Ham. What, are they children? who maintains 'em? how 
are they escoted?^^ ^^■^ \\^^y pursue the quality no longer 
than they can sing? will they not say afterwards, if they 
should grow themselves to common players, — as it is most 
like, if their means are no better, — their writers do them 
wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession ? ^^ 

play: "This quarry cries on havoc." He also very often uses top, both 
noun and verb, in the sense of to excel or surpass. He also has question 
repeatedly in the sense of talk or conversation. — For this explanation I am 
mainly indebted to Mr. Joseph Crosby, of Zanesville, O., who remarks to me 
upon the whole sentence as follows : " A brood of young hawks, unfledged 
nestlings, that exclaim against, or lampoon, the best productions of the 
dramatic pen ; little chits, that declaim squibs, and turn to ridicule their 
seniors and betters, both actors and authors, and are vociferously applauded 
for it," 

5'i To berattle is to berate, to squib. Here, again, I quote from Mr. 
Crosby : " It is no wonder the regular profession suffer, when children thus 
' carry it away,' and are all ' the fashion ' ; berating the adult performers, and 
getting ' most tyrannically clapp'd for it ' ; so much so, that the well-deserv- 
ing writers for the ' common stages,' grown-up men ' wearing rapiers, are 
afraid of goose-quills,' (applied to the penny-a-liners for the boys,) and dare 
scarce come to the play-house any more." 

51 The allusion is to the children of St. Paul's and of the Revels, whose 
performing of plays was much in fashion at the time this play was written. 
From an early date, the choir-boys of St. Paul's, Westminster, Windsor, and 
the Chapel Royal, were engaged in such performances, and sometimes 
played at Court. The complaint here is, that these juveniles abuse " the 
common stages," that is, the pubUc theatres. 

52 Escoted is paid; from the French escot, a shot or reckoning. — Quality 
is profession or calling ; often so used, — " No longer than they can sing" 
means no longer than they keep the voices of boys. 

53 Run down the profession to which they are themselves to succeed. 
This fully accords with, and approves, the explanation given in note 49. As 
Mr. Crosby observes, " it appears that a contest was waging between the 



112 HAMLET, ACT II. 

Rosen. Faith, there has been much to-do on both sides ; 
and the nation holds it no sin to tarre ^^ them to controversy : 
there was for a while no money bid for argument, unless the 
poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.^^ 

Ham. Is't possible? 

Guild. O, there has been much throwing about of brains.^^ 

Ham. Do the boys carry it away?^^ 

Rosen. Ay, that they do, my lord ; Hercules and his load 
too. 

Ham. It is not very strange ; for mine uncle is King of 
Denmark, and those that would make mows at him while my 
father lived give twenty, forty, fifty, an hundred ducats a-piece 
for his picture in little. 'Sblood,^^ there is something in this 
more than natural, if philosophy could find it out. 

\_Flourish of trumpets within. 

Guild. There are the players. 

patrons of these boy-players, who wrote their parts for them, and the writers 
for ' the common stages,' whom the children so berated and disparaged." 

54 The Poet has to-do repeatedly in the exact sense of ado. — To tarre is 
to set 07t, to incite ; a word borrowed from the setting-on of dogs. 

55 The meaning is not " unless the poet and the player " went to fighting 
each other, but unless both the writers and the actors joined together in 
pelting and running down the full-grown regular performers. Here, as 
often, argument is the subject-matter or plot of a play, and so is put for the 
play itself. Question, again, often means conversation, and is here put, ap- 
parently, for the dialogue. So that the meaning of the whole seems to be, 
" The public would not patronize these juvenile performances, unless both 
the ' eyases ' and the ' goosequills,' (that is, the boy-actors and their writers,) 
in their dialogue, went to abusing or berating the authors and actors of the 
' common stages.' " — Crosby. 

56 Bandying of wit, or pelting each other with words. 

57 That is, carry all the world before them : there is, perhaps, an allusion 
to the Globe theatre, the sign of which is said to have been Hercules carry- 
ing the globe. 

5S 'Sblood is an old diluted and disguised oath, originally God's blood. 
So, also, are 'swoimds or 'zounds, 'sfoot, 'slight. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. II3 

Ham. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your 
hands, come : the appurtenance of welcome is fashion and 
ceremony : let me comply with you in this garb ; lest my ex- 
tent to the players, ^'^ which, I tell you, must show fairly out- 
ward, should more appear like entertainment than yours. 
You are welcome ; but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are 
deceived. 

Guild. In what, my dear lord ? 

Ham. I am but mad north-north-west ; when the wind is 
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.^^ 

Enter Polonius, 

Polo. Well be with you, gentlemen ! 

Ham. Hark you, Guildenstern ; — and you too ; — at each 
ear a hearer : that great baby you see there is not yet out of 
his swaddling- clouts. 

Rosen. Happily he's the second time come to them j for 
they say an old man is twice a child. 

Ham. I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players ; 
mark it. — You say rights sir : o' Monday morning; 'twas so 
indeed.*^^ 

Polo. My lord, I have news to tell you. 

Ham. My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius 
was an actor in Rome, — 

59 To comply with, as here used, evidently means to be formally civil or 
polite to, or to compliment. We have it again in the same sense, in v. 2, 
where Hamlet says of Osric, " He did comply with his dug before he suck'd 
it." — Appzirtetiance is appertainings, ox proper appendages. — Garb is style or 
manner. Repeatedly so. — " My exteitt to the players " means exte?tsio7t of 
courtesy and civility to them. 

60 " To know a hawk from a handsaw " was a proverb in Shakespeare's 
time. Handsaw is merely a corruption of hernshaw, which means a heroft. 

61 This is spoken in order to bUnd Polonius as to what they have been 
talking about. 



114 HAMLET, ACT II. 

Polo. The actors are come hither, my lord. 

Ham. Buz, buz ! ^'^ 

Polo. Upon mine honour, — 

Ham. Then came each actor on his ass, — 

Polo, — the best actors in the world, either for tragedy, 
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pas- 
toral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, 
scene individable, or poem unhmited ; ^^ Seneca cannot be 
too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the 
liberty,^^ these are the only men. 

Ham. O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst 
thou! 

Polo. What treasure had he, my lord ? 

Ham. Why, 

One fair daughter, and no more, 
The which he loved passing well. 

Polo. \Aside^ Still on my daughter. 
Ha7n. Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah ? 

62 Hamlet affects to discredit the news : all a mere buzzing or rumour. 
Polonius then assures him, " On my honour " ; which starts the poor joke, 
" If they are come on your honour, ' then came each actor on his ass ' " ; these 
latter words being probably a quotation from some ballad. 

63 Individable for undivided; just as we have tenable for retained, i. 2: 
" Let it be tenable in your silence still." The Poet has many like instances 
of the endings -able or -ible and -ed used indiscriminately. In the text, 
scene and poem are evidently used as equivalent terms. In the Greek 
Tragedy there was no division into scenes ; the scene continued the same, 
or undivided, all through the piece. But in the Gothic Drama, as Shake- 
speare found and fixed it, the changes of scene are without definite limita- 
tions. This seems to be the difference meant. Seneca was considered the 
best of the Roman tragic writers, and Plautus of the comic. 

64 "The meaning," says Collier, " probably is, that the players were good, 
whether at written productions or at extemporal plays, where liberty was 
allowed to the performers to invent the dialogue, in imitation of the Italian 
commedle at improvisoy v 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. I15 

Polo. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daugh- 
ter that I love passing well. 

Ham. Nay, that follows not. 

Polo. What follows, then, my lord ? 

Ham. Why, As by lot, God wot; and then, you know, // 
came to pass, as most like it was,^^ — the first row of the 
pious chanson 66 will show you more.; for look, where my 
abridgments come.^^ — 

Enter four or five Players. 

You are welcome, masters ; welcome, all. I am glad to see 
ye well. Welcome, good friends. — O, my old friend ! thy 
face is valanced since I saw thee last : ^s comest thou to 
beard me in Denmark? — What, my young lady and mis- 

65 Hamlet is teasing the old fox, and quibbling between a logical and a 
literal sequence. The lines he quotes are from an old ballad, entitled 
Jephfha, Judge of Israel. A copy of the ballad, as Shakespeare knew it, 
was reprinted in Evan's Old Ballads, in 1810; the first stanza being as fol- 
lows : — 

I have read that many years agoe, 
When Jephtha, judge of Israel, 
Had one fair daughter and no moe, 
Whom he loved passing well; 
As by lot, God wot, 
It came to passe, most like it was, 
Great warrs there should be. 
And who should be the chiefe but he, but he. 

66 Chanson is something to be sung or chanted; and "the first row" 
probably means the first column, or, perhaps, stanza. 

6" Perhaps Hamlet calls the players " my abridgments " in the same sense 
and for the same reason as he afterwards calls them " the abstracts and 
brief chroniclers of the time." He may have the further meaning of abridg- 
ing or cutting short his talk with Polonius. Or, again, he may mean that 
their office is to abridge the time, or make it seem short; to minister pas- 
times. 

68 Valanced \% fringed, and here means that the player has lately grown 
a beard. 



Il6 HAMLET, ACT II. 

tress ! By'r Lady, ^^ your ladyship is nearer to heaven than 
when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopineJ^ Pray 
God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not 
crack'd within the ring,'^^ — Masters, you are all welcome. 
We'll e'en to't like French falconers, fly at any thing we 
see : '^^ we'll have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste 
of your quality ; come, a passionate speech. 

I Play. What speech, my lord ? 

Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once, — but it 
was never acted ; or, if it was, not above once, for the play, 
I remember, pleased not the million ; 'twas caviar to the 
general ; "^^ but it was — as I received it, and others, whose 
judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine '^^ — an 
excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as 

69 By r Lady is a contraction oi by our Lady, referring to the Virgin Mary. 
In the Poet's time, female parts were acted by boys ; and Hamlet is ad- 
dressing one whom as a boy he had seen playing some heroine. 

■^0 Choplne was the name of an enormously thick-soled shoe which Span- 
ish and Italian ladies were in the habit of wearing, in order, as would seem, 
to make themselves as tall as the men, perhaps taller ; or it may have been, 
to keep their long skirts from mopping the sidewalks too much. The fash- 
ion is said to have been used at one time by the English. 

■^1 The old gold coin was thin and liable to crack. There was a ring or 
circle on it, within which' •'the sovereign's head was stamped ; if the crack 
extended beyond this ring, it was rendered uncurrent : it was therefore a 
simile applied to any other injured object. There is some humour in ap- 
plying it to a cracked voice. 

■^2 From this it would seem that the English custom in falconry was, first 
to let off some bird into the air, and then to fiy the hawk after it; the 
French, to fly the hawk at any bird that might happen to be on the wing 
within ken. 

"^^ Caviar v^^s the pickled roes of certain fish of the sturgeon kind, called 
in Italy caviale, and much used there and in other countries. Great quan- 
tities were prepared on the river Volga formerly. As a dish of high season- 
ing and peculiar flavour, it was not relished by the many ; that is, the gen- 
eral. 

74 Meaning, probably, were better than mine. See page no, note 49. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. II7 

much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said there 
were no sallets in the hnes to make the matter savoury ,''^5 j^gr 
no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of affec- 
tation ; but call'd it an honest method, as wholesome as 
sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One 
speech in it I chiefly loved : 'twas yEneas' tale to Dido ; and 
thereabout of it especially where he speaks of Priam's slaugh- 
ter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line : let me 
see, let me see, — 

The ricgged Fyrrkus, like tJi' Hyrcanian beast, — 
'tis not so : — it begins with Pyrrhus : 

The i^ugged Pyrrhics, — he whose sable arms. 
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble 

When he lay couched in the ominous horse, — 
Hath now this dread and black complexion smeared 

With heraldry more dismal : head to foot 
Now is he total gules ;'^^ hoj-ridly trick" d 

With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, 
Baked and impasted with the parching streets, 

That lend a tyrannous and damjted light 

To their lorcfs murder. Roasted in wrath and fire. 
And thus oversized with coagulate gore, 

With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus 

Old grandsire Pidam seeks. 

So, proceed you. 

Polo. Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent 
and good discretion. 

75 No impertinent high-seasoning or false brilliancy, to give it an unnatu- 
ral relish. Sallet is explained " a pleasant and merry word that maketh folk 
to laugh." — This passage shows that the Poet understood the essential 
poverty of " fine writing." 

76 Gules is red, in the language of heraldry : to trick is to colour. 



Il8 HAMLET, ACT II. 

I Play. Anon he finds him ^ 

Striking too short at Greeks ; his antique sword, 
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls, 
Rep2tgna7it to co7ninand : imequal matched, 
Pyrrhus at Priam drives ; in rage strikes wide ; 
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword 
Til' tmnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium, 
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top 
Stoops to his base ; and with a hideous crash 
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus^ ear : for, lo ! his sword. 
Which was declining on the milky head 
Of reverend Priam, seeni'd V the air to stick : 
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood. 
And like a neutral to his will and matter. 
Did nothing. 

But, as we often see, against so7ne storm, 
A silence in the heavens, the rack'^'^ stand still, 
The bold winds speechless, and the 07'b below 
As hush as death, anon the di'eadful thunder 
Doth rend the 7'egiojt ; "^ so, after Pyrt'hus'* pause. 
Aroused vengeance sets him new a-wo7'k ; 
And never did the Cyclops'' hammers fall 
On Ma?'s's armour, forged for proof etei-7ie^^ 
With less re77iorse tha7i Pyrrhus'' bleedi7ig sword 
Now falls 071 P7da77t. 
Out, out, thou ha7'lot, Fo7'tu7ie ! All you gods, 

77 Rack, from reek, is used by old writers to signify the highest and there- 
fore hghtest clouds. So in Fletcher's Women Pleased, iv. 2 : " Far swifter 
than the sailing 7'ack that gallops upon the wings of angry winds." So that 
the heavens must be silent indeed, when " the rack stands still." 

78 Region, here, is sky, or the air. So in the last speech of this scene : " I 
should have fatted all the regio7i kites," &c. 

79 For eternal resistance to assault. As we say shot-proof, water-proof. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. II9 

In general synod, take away her power ; 
Break all the spokes and fellies frofn her wheel, 
And boivl the round nave down the, hill of heaven 
As low as to the fiends I '^^ 

Polo. This is too long. 

Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard. — Pr'ythee' 
say on : he's for a jig*^^ or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps 
Say on ; come to Hecuba. 

I Play. But who, O, who had seen the modled Queen — 

Ham. The mobled Queen ? 

Polo. That's good ; mobled Queen ^^ is good. 

I Play. — Run barefoot zip and down, threatening the flames 
With bisson rheum ; ^^ a clout about that head 
Where late the diadem stood ; and for a robe, 
About her lank and all o^er-teemed loins, 
A blanket in th^ alarm of fear caught up ; — 
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep''d 
' Gainst Fortune'' s state would treason have pronounced : 

80 This admirable substitution of the epic for the dramatic, giving such 
reality to the dramatic diction of Shakespeare's own dialogue, and author- 
ized, too, by the actual style of the tragedies before his time, is well worthy 
of notice. The fancy that a burlesque was intended sinks below criticism : 
the lines, as epic narrative, are superb. — In the "thoughts, and even in the 
separate parts of the diction, this description is highly poetical : in truth, 
taken by itself, that is its fault, that it is too poetical! — the language of lyric 
vehemence and epic pomp, and not of the drama. But if Shakespeare had 
made the diction truly dramatic, where would have been the contrast be- 
tween Hamlet SiXid the play in Hamlet f — COLERIDGE, 

81 Gig-a, in Italian, was a fiddle or crowd; gigaiv, a fiddler, or minstrel. 
Hence ayV^ was a ballad, or ditty, sung to the fiddle. 

82 Mobled is hastily or carelessly dressed. To mob or mab is still used in 
the north of England for to dress in a slatternly manner ; and Coleridge 
says " 7;zc»i5-cap is still a word in common use for a morning cap." 

83 Bisson is blind. Bisson rheum is therefore blindi?ig tears. 



I20 HAAILET, ACT II. 

But if the gods themselves did see her then. 
When she saw Pyrrhus inake malicious sport 

In mincing with his sword her husband^ s limbs, 
The instant biirst of clamotir that she made — 
Unless things mortal move the?7i not at all — 
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, 

And passion in the gods^'^ 

Polo. Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has 
tears in's eyes. — Pray you, no more. 

Ham. 'Tis well ; I'll have thee speak out the rest soon. — 
Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed ? Do 
you hear ? let them be well used, for they are the abstracts 
and brief chronicles of the time : ^^ after your death you 
were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while 
you live. 

Polo. My lord, I will use them according to their desert. 

Ham. God's bodykins,^^ man, much better ! Use every 
man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? Use 
them after your ' own honour and dignity : the less they de- 
serve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in. 

Polo. Come, sirs. 

Ham. Follow him, friends ; we'll hear a play to-morrow. 
\_Exit PoLONius with all the Players but the First.'] — Dost 
thou hear me, old friend ? can you play The Murder of Gon- 
zago ? 

84 By a hardy poetical license this expression means, "Would haxe filled 
with tears the burning eyes of heaven." — Passion, here, is compassion, or 
sympathetic sorrow. 

85 The condensed efficacies and representatives of the age. In Shake- 
speare's time, the Drama, including both authors and actors, v^^as a sort of 
Fourth Estate in the realm ; perhaps as much so as the Newspaper Press is 
now. 

86 Bodykins is merely a diminutive of body. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 121 

J Play. Ay, my lord. 

Ham, We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, for a need, 
study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would 
set down and insert in't, could you not ? 

I Play. Ay, my lord. 

Ham. Very well. Follow that lord ; and look you mock 
him not. \_Exit Player.] — My good friends, I'll leave you 
till night : you are welcome to Elsinore. 

Rosen. Good my lord ! 

Ham. Ay, so, God b' wi' ye ! — 

\_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 
Now I am alone. 
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I ! 
Is it not monstrous, that this player here. 
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion. 
Could force his soul so to his own conceit,^^ 
That from her working all his visage wann'd ; 
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, 
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting 
With forms to his conceit ? and all for nothing ! 
For Hecuba ! 

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, 
That he should weep for her ? What would he do, 
Had he the motive and the cue ^^ for passion 
That I have ? He would drown the stage with tears. 
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech ; 
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free. 
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed 

87 Conceit is used repeatedly by the Poet for conception or imagination. 

88 The hint or prompt-word, a technical phrase among players. "A 
prompter," says Florio, " one who keepes the booke for the plaiers, and 
teacheth them or schoUers their kue." 



122 HAMLET, ACT II. 

The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, 

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, 

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, 

And can say nothing ; ^^ no, not for a king 

Upon whose property and most dear life 

A damn'd defeat was made.^^ Am I a coward? 

Who calls me villain ? breaks my pate across ? 

Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face ? 

Tweaks me by th' nose ? gives me the lie i' the throat, 

As deep as to the lungs ? ^^ who does me this ? 

Ha! 

'Swounds, I should take it ; for it cannot be 

But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall 

To make oppression bitter ; ^^ or, ere this, 

I should have fatted all the region kites ^^ 

With this slave's offal.^'^ Bloody, bawdy villain ! 

89 This John was probably distinguished as a sleepy, apathetic fellow, a 
sort of dreaming or droning simpleton or flunky. The only other mention 
of him that has reached us is in Armin's Nest of Ninnies, 1608 : " His name 
is John, indeed, says the cinnick, but neither John a-nods nor John a-dreams, 
yet either, as you take it." 

so Thus Chapman, in his Revenge for Honour: "That he might in the 
meantime make a sure defeat on our good aged father's life." 

91 This was giving one the lie with the most galling additions and terms 
of insult, or belabouring him with extreme provocation, and then rubbing it 
in ; so that the not resenting it would stamp him as the most hopeless of 
cowards. So in King Richard II., when Norfolk would drive home his 
charge upon Bolingbroke with the utmost force, he exclaims, " As low as to 
thy heart, through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest." 

92 " Lack gall to make me feel the bitterness of oppression " ; or, perhaps, 
to make oppression bitter to the oppressor. — The gentleness of doves and 
pigeons was supposed to proceed from their having no gall in them. 

93 All the kites of the airy region, the sky. See page 118, note 78. 

94 This soliloquy is said to mean, forsooth, that thus far Hamlet has mis- 
taken and blundered about the whole thing. Pray, have people no ears for 
the agony of a human being, which is so intolerable, that it drives him to 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 23 

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless ^^ villain 1 

O vengeance ! — 

Why, what an ass am I ! This is most brave, 

That I, the son of a dear father murder'd. 

Prompted to my revenge by Heaven and Hell,^^ 

Must, like a trull, unpack my heart with words, 

And fall a- cursing, like a very drab, 

A scullion ! 

Fie upon't ! foh ! About, my brain ! ^^ — I've heard 

That guilty creatures sitting at a play 

Have by the very cunning of the scene 

Been struck so to the soul, that presently 

They have proclaim'd their malefactions ; 

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak 

the extremity of falling out with himself? no appreciation of a situation in 
which righteous indignation, because it cannot reach its object, turns against 
itself, in order to give itself vent, and to cool the heated sense of the impos- 
sibility of acting, by self-reproach and all manner of self-depreciation ? That 
he can say nothing for a king upon whose property and most dear life a 
damned defeat has been made, — that is the very horror of his position, — 
to be forced to speak not a syllable directly to the point : if he had chosen 
to do only that, most assuredly and instantly he would have lost the game. 
The actor, he can talk of Priam's death and Hecuba's grief, — talk of them 
so movingly ! Had he Ms (Hamlet's) motive, Ms cue for passion, he would 
drown the stage with tears, make mad the guilty, &c., because he, in the 
freedom of the actor, of the objective, can act ! But Hamlet cannot do that ; 
ke can act no play, but a real thing, directly, out of his own consciousness ; 
and must suffer wreck, because he can adduce no proof of the reality. He 
must be silent ; he can operate only indirectly, by means of a reflected 
image ; must let the play-actors speak and act for him ; and can himself 
only /00k on and observe. — Werder. 

95 Kindless is unnatural. See page 59, note 18. — Observe how Hamlet 
checks himself in this strain of objurgation, and then, in mere shame of what 
he has just done, turns to ranting at himself for having ranted. 

96 By all the best and all the worst passions of his nature. 

9"^ "About, my brain," is nothing more than " to 'work, my brain." The 
phrase to go about a thing, is still common. 



124 HAMLET, act ill. 

With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players 

Play something like the murder of my father 

Before mine uncle : I'll observe his looks ; 

I'll tent him to the quick : if he but blench^^s 

I know my course. The spirit that I have seen 

May be the Devil : and the Devil hath power 

T' assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and perhaps, 

Out of my weakness and my melancholy, — 

As he is very potent with such spirits, — 

Abuses me to damn me.^^ I'll have grounds 

More relative than this : ^^^ the play's the thing 

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King. [^ExU 



ACT III. 

Scene I. — A Room in the Castle. 
Enter the King, the Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosen- 

CRANTZ, a7ld GUILDENSTERN. 

King. And can you, by no drift of circumstance,^ 
Get from him why he puts on this confusion, 

98 To tent was to probe a wound. To blench is to shrink or start. 

99 That Hamlet was not alone in the suspicion here started, appears from 
Sir Thomas Browne's Rellglo Medici : " I believe that those apparitions 
and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the 
unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us into mischief, blood, 
and villainy ; instilling and stealing into our hearts that the blessed spirits 
are not at rest in their graves, but wander, solicitous of the affairs of the 
world." — To abuse, in the Poet's language, is to deceive, or practise upon 
with illusions. 

100 Grounds standing in closer and clearer relation with the matter alleged 
by the Ghost. 

1 Course of indirect, roundabout inquiry. 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DExNMARK. 1 25 

Grating so harshly all his days of quiet 
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy? 

Rosen. He does confess he feels himself distracted ; 
But from what cause he will by no means speak. 

Guild. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded ; 
But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof. 
When we would bring him on to some confession 
Of his true state. 

Queej2. Did he receive you well ? 

Rosen. Most like a gentleman. 

Guild. But with much forcing of his disposition. 

Rosen. Most free of question,^ but of our demands 
Niggard in his reply. 

Queen. Did you assay him 

To any pastime ? 

Rosen. Madam, it so fell out that certain players 
We o'er-raught ^ on the way : of these we told him ; 
And there did seem in him a kind of joy 
To hear of it. They are about the Court ; 
And, as I think, they have already order 
This night to play before him. 

Polo. 'Tis most true : 

And he beseech'd me to entreat your Majesties 
To hear and see the matter. 

King. With all my heart ; and it doth much content me 
To hear him so inclined. — 
Good gentlemen, give him a further edge. 
And drive his purpose on to these delights. 

2 Here, as often, of is probably equivalent to in respect of. Also in " of 
our demands." Question may here mean inquiry, or conversation ; and 
either of these senses accords well enough with the occasion referred to. 
See Critical Notes. 

3 O'er-raught is overtook ; raught being an old form of reached. 



126 HAMLET, ACT III. 

Rosen. We shall, my lord. 

\_Exetmt RosENCRANTZ and Guildenstern. 

King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too ; 

For we have closely* sent for Hamlet hither, 
That he, as 'twere by accident, may here 
Affront ^ OpheHa. 

Her father and myself, lawful espials, 
Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen, 
We may of their encounter frankly judge ; 
(\nd gather by him, as he is behaved, 
If t be the affliction of his love or no 
That thus he suffers for. 

Queen. I shall obey you. — 

(\nd for your part, Ophelia, I do wish 
That your good beauty be the happy cause 
Of Hamlet's wildness ; so shall I hope your virtues 
Will bring him to his wonted way again, 
To both your honours. 

Ophe. Madam, I wish it may. \^Exit Queen. 

Polo. Ophelia, walk you here. — Gracious, so please you. 
We will bestow ourselves. — \_To Ophe.] Read on this book ; 
That show of such an exercise may colour 
Your loneliness. We're oft to blame in this, — 
'Tis too much proved, — that with devotion's visage 
A.nd pious action we do sugar o'er 
The Devil himself. 

King. \_Asider\ O, 'tis too true ! 
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience ! 

4^ Closely is secretly ; sent in such a way as not to let Hamlet know from 
whom the message came : a got-up accident. 

5 Affront was sometimes used for meet, or, as it is explained a little after, 
encounter. So in Cymbeline, iv. 3 : " Your preparation can affront no less 
than what you hear of." 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 12 7 

The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art, 
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it^ 
Than is my deed to my most painted word. 
O heavy burden ! 

Polo. I hear him coming : let's withdraw, my lord. 

\^Exeunt King and Polonius. 

Enter Hamlet. 

Ham. To be, or not to be, — that is the question : 
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
And by opposing end them ? To die, — to sleep, — 
No more ; and by a sleep to say we end 
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, — to sleep ; — 
To sleep ! perchance to dream ! — ay, there's the rub j '^ 
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,^ 
Must give us pause : there's the respect ' 
That makes calamity of so long life ; ^ 
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay, 

6 Not more ugly in comparison with the thing that helps it. 

" Rub is obstruction, hindrance. The word was borrowed from the bowl- 
ing-alley, where it was used of any thing that deflected the bowl from its aim. 

8 "This mortal coir is the tumult and bustle of this mortal life; or, as 
Wordsworth has it, " the fretful stir unprofitable, and the fever of the world." 
Perhaps coil here means, also, the body. 

^ That is, the consideration that induces us to undergo the calamity of so 
long a life. This use of respect is very frequent. 



128 HAMLET, ACT III. 

The insolence of office, and the spurns 

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes, 

When he himself might his quietus i^ make 

With a bare bodkin? who'd these fardels ii bear, 

To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 

But that the dread of something after death, — 

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn 

No traveller returns,^^ — puzzles the will. 

And makes us rather bear those ills we have 

Than fly to others that we know not of? 

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ; 

And thus the native hue of resolution ^ 

Is sickhed o'er with the pale cast of thought ; i^ 

And enterprises of great pith and moment 

With this regard their currents turn awry. 

And lose the name of action. — Soft you now ! 

The fair Ophelia ! — Nymph, in thy orisons 

Be all my sins remember'd. 

Ojf/ie. Good my lord, 

How does your Honour for this many a day? 

1" The allusion is to the term quietus est, used in settling accounts at 
exchequer audits. Thus in Sir Thomas Overbury's character of a Franklin: 
" Lastly, to end him, he cares not when his end comes ; he needs not feare 
his audit, for his quietus is in heaven." — Bodkin was the ancient term for a 
small dagger. 

11 Fardel is an old word for burdef? or bundle. 

12 Bourn is boundary. So in Troilus and Cressida, ii. 3 : "I will not 
praise thy wisdom, which, like a boutn, a pale, a shore, confines thy spa- 
cious and dilated parts." — Of course Hamlet means that no one comes back 
to the state of mortal life ; or, as Coleridge says, " no traveller returns to 
this world as his home or abiding-place." 

13 That is, the pale complexion of grief. Tho7ight \Na.s often used in this 
way. So in Twelfth Night, ii. 4: "She pined in thought" ; that is, she 
wasted away through grief. Also in yulius Ccesar, ii. i : "If he love Caesar, 
all he can do is to himself; take thought a?id die for Caesar" ; which means 
erieve himself to death. 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 29 

Ham. I humbly thank you ; well, well, well. 

Ophe. My lord, I have remembrances of yours. 
That I have longed long to re-deliver ; 
I pray you, now receive them. 

Ham, No, not I : 

I never gave you aught. 

Ophe, My honour'd lord, 'I know right well you did ; 
And with them words of so sweet breath composed 
As made the things more rich : their perfume lost, 
Take these again ; for to the noble mind 
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 
There, my lord. 

Ham. Ha, ha ! are you honest? 

Ophe. My lord? 

Ham. Are you fair?i'* 

Ophe. What means your lordship ? 

Ha7n. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty sho; /d 
admit no discourse to your beauty.i^ 

Ophe. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than 
with honesty? 

Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner 

1* Here it is evident that the penetrating Hamlet perceives, from the 
strange and forced manner of Opheha, that the sweet girl was not acting a 
part of her own, but was a decoy : and his after-speeches are not so much 
directed to her as to the listeners and spies. Such a discovery in a mood 
so anxious and irritable accounts fbr a certain harshness in him ; and yet a 
wild up-working of love, sporting with opposites in a wilful, self-tormenting 
strain of irony, is perceptible throughout. — COLERIDGE. 

15 " Your chastity should have no conversation or acquaintance with your 
beauty." This use oi ho?iesty for chastity is very frequent in Shakespeare. — 
It should be noted, that in these speeches Hamlet refers, not to Ophelia 
personally, but to the sex in general. So, especially, when he says, " I have 
heard of your paintings too," he does not mean that Ophelia paints, but 
that the use of painting is common with her sex. 



130 HAMLET, ACT III. 

transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force 
of honesty can translate beauty into his hkeness : this was 
sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did 
love you once. 

Ophe. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. 

Ham. You should not have beheved me ; for virtue can- 
not so inoculate our old stock but we shall rehsh of it : ^^ I 
loved you not. 

Ophe. I was the more deceived. 

Ham. Get thee to a nunnery : why wouldst thou be a 
breeder of sinners ? I am myself indifferent honest : ^^ but 
yet I could accuse me of such things, that it were better my 
mother had not borne me : I am very proud, revengeful, 
ambitious ; with more offences at my beck ^^ than I have 
thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or 
time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do 
crawling between earth and heaven ? We are arrant knaves 
all ; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's 
your father? 

Ophe. At home, my lord. 

Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play 
the foobno where but in's own house. Farewell. 

Ophe. \_Aside^ O, help him, you sweet Heavens ! 

Ham. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for 
thy dowry : Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou 
shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go : fare- 
well. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool ; for wise 
men know well enough what monsters you make of them. 
To a nunnery, go ; and quickly too. Farewell. 

16 " Cannot so penetrate and purify our nature, but that we shall still 
have a strong taste of our native badness." 

1" " Indifferent honest " is tolerably honest. See page 105, note 32. 
18 That is, " ready to come about me on a signal of permission." 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 131 

Ophe. \_Aside^ O heavenly powers, restore him ! 

Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough ; 
God has given you one face, and you make yourselves an- 
other : you jig, you amble, and you lisj), and nickname God's 
creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. ^^ Go 
to, I'll no more on't ; it hath made me mad. I say, we will 
have no more marriages : those that are married already, all 
but one, shall live ; the rest shall keep as they are. To a 
nunnery, go.^^ \_Exit' 

Ophe. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! 
The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword ; 
Th' expectancy and rose of the fair State, 
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,^! 
Th' observed of all observers, — quite, quite down ! 
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched. 
That suck'd the honey of his music vows. 
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh \ 

19 Johnson explains this, " You mistake by wanton affectation, and pre- 
tend to mistake by ignorance'' Moberly, " You use ambiguous words, as 
if you did not know their meaning." 

20 Throughout the latter part of this fine scene, Hamlet's disorder runs to 
a very high pitch, and he seems to take an insane delight in lacerating the 
gentle creature before him. Yet what keenness and volubility of wit ! what 
energy and swiftness of discourse ! the intellectual forces in a fiery gallop, 
while the social feelings seem totally benumbed. And when Ophelia meets 
his question, "Where's your father? " with the reply, "At home, my lord," 
how quickly he darts upon the true meaning of her presence ! The sweet, 
innocent girl, who knows not how to word an untruth, having never tried on 
a lie in her life, becomes embarrassed in her part ; and from her manner 
Hamlet instantly gathers what is on foot, and forthwith shapes his speech so 
as to sting the eavesdroppers. 

21 This is well explained in what Lady Percy says of her lost Hotspur, in 
2 King Henry IV., ii. 3 : "By his light did all the chivalry of England move ; 
he was indeed the glass wherein the noble youth did dress themselves." 



132 HAMLET, ACT III. 

That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth 

Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me, 

T' have seen what I have seen, see what I see ! 

Enter the King and Polonius. 

King. Love ! his affections do not that way tend ; 
Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a httle, 
Was not like madness. There's something in his soul. 
O'er which his melancholy sits on brood ; 
And I do doubt ^^ the hatch and the disclose 
Will be some danger : which for to prevent, 
I have in quick determination 
Thus set it down : He shall with speed to England, 
For the demand of our neglected tribute : 
Haply the seas and countries different. 
With variable objects, shall expel 
This something-settled matter in his heart ; 
Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus 
From fashion of himself. What think you on't ? 

Polo. It shall do well : but yet do I believe 
The origin and commencement of his grief 
Sprung from neglected love. — How now, Ophelia ! 
You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said ; 
We heard it all. — My lord, do as you please ; 
But, if you hold it fit, after the play 
Let his Queen mother all alone entreat him 
ToMiow his grief: let her be round ^^ with him; 
And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear 
Of all their conference. If she find him not, 

22 Doubt, again, in the sense oifear or suspect. 

23 Round, again, iox plain-spoken, downright^ 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 133 

To England send him ; or confine him where 
Your wisdom best shall think. 

Kins^. It shall be so : 

Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go. \_Exeicnt. 

Scene II. — A Hall in the Castle. 

Enter Hamlet and Players.^ 

Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it 
to you, trippingly on the tongue : but if you mouth it, as 
many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke 
my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, 
thus ; but use all gently : for in the very torrent, tempest, 
and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire 
and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it 
offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated 
fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears 
of the groundlings ; ^ who, for the most part, are capable of 
nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I would 
have such a fellow whipp'd for o'erdoing Termagant ; it out- 
herods Herod : ^ pray you, avoid it. 

1 " This dialogue of Hamlet with the players," says Coleridge, " is one of 
the happiest instances of Shakespeare's power of diversifying the scene 
while he is carrying on the plot." 

2 The ancient theatres were far from the commodious, elegant structures 
which later times have seen. The pit was, truly, what its name denotes, an 
untioored space in the area of the house, sunk considerably beneath the 
level of the stage. Hence this part of the audience were cd^^A givundlings. 

3 Termagaimt Ss the name given in old romances to the tempestuous god 
of the Saracens. He is usually joined with Mahound, or Mahomet. John 
Florio calls him "^ Termiglsto, a great boaster, quarreller, killer, tamer, or 
ruler of the universe ; the child of the earthquake and of the thunder, the 
brother of death." Hence this personage was introduced into the old Mira- 
cle-plays as a demon of outrageous and violent demeanour; or, as Bale 
says, " Termagauntes altogether, and very devils incarnate." The murder of 



134 HAMLET, ACT in 

I Flay. I warrant your Honour. 

Main. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discre- 
tion be your tutor : suit the action to the word, the word to 
the action ; with this special observance, that you o'erstep 
not the modesty of nature : for any thing so overdone is from 
the purpose of playing, whose end", both at the first and now, 
was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature ; to 
show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the 
very age and body of the time his form and pressure.'* Now, 
this overdone, or come tardy of,^ though it make the unskil- 
ful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve ; the censure 
of the which one must, in your allowance,^ o'erweigh a whole 
theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, 
and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it pro- 
fanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the 
gait of Christian, pagan, nor Turk, have so strutted and bel- 
lowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had 
made them, and not made them well, they imitated humanity 
so abominably. 

I Flay. I hope we have reform'd that indifferently''' with 
us, sir. 

Ham. O, reform it altogether. And let those that play 

the innocents was a favourite subject for a Miracle-play; and wherever 
Herod is introduced, he plays the part of a vaunting braggart, a tyrant of 
tyrants, and does indeed outdo Termagant. 

4 Pressure is impression here ; as when, in i. 5 : Hamlet says, " I'll wipe 
away all.forms, ?X\- press u?'es past." 

5 To " come tardy of" a thing is evidently the same as to come short of it, 

6 " The censm-e of the which one " means the Jzidgment of one of which, or 
of whojn. This use of censure is very frequent. — Allowance is estimation or 
approval. To approve is the more frequent meaning of to allow, in Shake- 
speare. And so in the Bible ; as, " The Lord alloweth the righteous " ; and, 
" That which I do I allow not." 

■^ That is, tolerably well. See page 130, note 17. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 35 

your Clowns speak no more than is set down for them : for 
there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some 
quantity of barren spectators to laugh too ; though, in the 
meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to 
be considered : that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful am- 
bition in the Fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. — 

\_Exeunt Players. 

Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern. 

How now, my lord ! will the King hear this piece of work? 

Polo, And the Queen too, aiid that presently. 

Ham. Bid the players make haste. \_Exit Polonius.] — 
Will you two help to hasten them ? 

Rosen. | ^^ ^.^^^ ^^^^ j^^.^^ 

Guild. ) 

\_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

Ham. What ho ! Horatio ! 

Enter Horatio. 

Hora. Here, sweet lord, at your service. 

Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man 
As e'er my conversation coped withal. 

Hora. O, my dear lord, — 

Ham. Nay, do not think I flatter ; 

For what advancement may I hope from thee 
That no revenue ^ hast but thy good spirits. 
To feed and clothe thee ? Why should the poor be flatter'd ? 
No, let the candied tongue Hck absurd pomp, 

8 Here, and generally, though not always, in Shakespeare, revenue has 
the accent on the second syllable. And such is undoubtedly the right pro- 
nunciation. I have marked the word in Spenser, Daniel, Dryden, Young, 
and Thomson, and all have it so. So, too, Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, 
and Edward Everett always spoke it. 



136 HAMLET, ACT III. 

And crook the pregnant ^ hinges of the knee 

Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear ? 

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, 

And could of men distinguish, her election 

Hath seal'd thee for herself : for thou hast been 

As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing ; 

A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards 

Hath ta'en with equal thanks : and blest are those 

Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, 

That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger 

To sound what stop she please. Give me that man 

That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him 

In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart. 

As I do thee. — Something too much of this. — ■ 

There is a play to-night before the King : 

One scene of it comes near the circumstance 

Which I have told thee of my father's death. 

I pr'ythee, when thou seest that act a-foot. 

Even with the very comment of thy soul 

Observe my uncle : if his occulted guilt 

Do not itself unkennel in one speech, 

It is a damned ghost that we have seen ; 

And my imaginations are as foul 

As Vulcan's stithy.i^ Give him heedful note : 

For I mine eyes will rivet to his face ; 

And, after, we will both cur judgments join 

In censure of his seeming. 

Hora. Well, my lord ; 

If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing, 
And 'scape detecting, I will pay the theft. 

^Pregnant is ready, prompt. — Caftdied is sugared; a tongue steeped in 
the sweetness of adulation. — Thrift is, profit ; the gold that flatterers lie for. 
10 Vulcan's workshop o'r smithy ; stith being an anvil. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DEiNMARK. 137 

Ham, They're coming to the play ; I must be idle : ^^ 
Get you a place. 

Danish march. A flourish. Enter the King, the Queen, 
PoLONius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, aiid 
others. 

King. How fares our cousin Hamlet ? 

Ham. Excellent, i' faith ; of the chameleon's dish : I eat 
the air, promise-cramm'd : ^^ you cannot feed capons so. 

King. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet j these 
words are not mine. 

Ham. No, nor mine now. — [_To Polonius.] My lord, 
you played once i' the university, you say? 

Folo. That did I, my lord ; and was accounted a good 
actor. 

Ham. What did you enact? 

Folo. I did enact Julius Caesar : I was kill'd i' the Capi- 
tol ; Brutus kill'd me.^^ 

Ham. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf 
there. i'^ — Be the players ready? 

Rosen. Ay, my lord ; they stay upon your patience. 

Queen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me. 

11 Must seem idle ; must behave as if his mind were purposeless, or intent 
upon nothing in particular. 

12 Because the chameleon was supposed to live on air. In fact, this and 
various other reptiles will live a long time without any visible food. So in 
Othello, iii. 3 : " I had rather be a toad, and live upon the vapour oi a dun- 
geon," &c. — The King snuffs offence in " I eat the air, promise-cramm'd," 
as implying that he has not kept his promise to Hamlet. 

Ip A Latin play on Csesar's death was performed at Christ's Church, Ox- 
ford, in 1582. Malone thinks that there was an English play on the same 
subject previous to Shakespeare's. Caesar was killed in Pompey's portico, 
and not in the Capitol ; but the error is at least as old as Chaucer's time. 

14 He acted the part of a brute. — The play on Capitol and capital is ob- 
vious enough. 



138 HAMLET, ACT III. 

Ham. No, good mother ; here's metal more attractive. 

Polo. \To the King.] O ho ! do you mark that? 

Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap ? 

\_Lying down at Ophelia's feet^ 

Ophe. No, my lord. 

Ham. I mean, my head upon your lap ? 

Ophe. Ay, my lord. You are merry, my lord. 

Ham. Who, I? 

Ophe. Ay, my lord. 

Ham. O God, your only jig-maker. What should a man 
do but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother 
looks, and my father died within's ^^ two hours. 

Ophe. Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord. 

Ham. So long? Nay, then let the Devil wear black, for 
I'll have a suit of sabell^^ O Heavens ! die two months 
ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great 
man's memory may outlive his life half a year : but, by'r 
Lady, he must build churches, then ; or else shall he suffer 
not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is For 
O, fo7' O, the hobby-horse is forgot .'^'^ 

15 Within's is a contraction of within this. The Poet has sctme contrac- 
tions even harsher than this. 

16 Sabell is a fiaine-co\oviX. A writer in The Critic for 1854, page 373, 
remarks that " sabell or sabelle is properly a fawn-colour a good deal height- 
ened with red, and that the term came from the French couleur d'isabelle." 
According to the Dictionary of the French Academy, isabelle is a colour 
" between white and yellow, but with the yellow predominating." It is there- 
fore a very showy, flaring colour ; as far as possible from mourning. 

1'^ The Hobby-horse was a part of the old Morris-dance, which was used 
in the May-games. It was the figure of a horse fastened round a man's 
waist, the man's legs going through the horse's body, and enabling him to 
walk, but covered by a long footcloth ; while false legs appeared where 
those of the man's should be, astride the horse. The Puritans waged a 
furious war against the Morris-dance ; which caused the Hobby-horse to be 
left out of it : hence the burden of a song, which passed into a proverb. 
The plays of the times have many allusions to it. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 139 

Hautboys play. The Dumb-show enters. 

Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly ; the Queen em- 
bi'acing him, and he her. She kneels, and makes show of 
protestation unto him. He takes lier up, and declines his 
head upon her neck ; lays him down upon a bank of flow- 
ers : she, seeing hi?n asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a 
fellozu, takes off his crown, kisses it, and poitrs poison in the 
King's ears, a?id exit. The Queen returns, finds the King 
dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner, with 
some two or three Mutes, conies in again, seeming to lament 
with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner 
wooes the Queen with gifts : she seems loth and unwilling 
awhile, but in the end accepts his love}'^ [Exeunt. 

Ophe. What means this, my lord ? 

Ham. Marry, this is miching mallecho ; ^^ it means mis- 
chief. 

Ophe, Belike this show imports the argument of the play. 

Enter Prologue. 

Hum. We shall know by this fellow : the players cannot 
keep counsel ; they'll tell aU.^o 

Ophe. Will he tell us what this show meant ? 

18 As the King does not take fire at this Dumb-show, we may suppose 
his attention to be so engaged with some about him, that he does not mark it. 

19 Miching mallecho is lurking mischief or evil-doing. . To mich, for to 
skulk, to lurk, was an old English verb in common use in Shakespeare's 
time ; and mallecho or malhecho, misdeed, he borrowed from the Spanish. 

20 Hamlet is running a high strain of jocularity with Ophelia, in order to 
hide his purpose. The wit here turns upon the fact, that an actor's business 
is speaking ; blurting out before the world what would else be unknown ; as 
dramatic personages are always supposed to be speaking, as without an au- 
dience, what an audience is nevertheless listening to. Hence, even when 
keeping counsel, they are not keeping it ; are telling the very things they are 
hiding, and blabbing to the public what they are confiding to each other. 



I40 HAMLET. ACT III. 

Ham. Ay, or any show that you'll show him : be not you 
ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means. 

Ophe. You are naught,^! you are naught ; I'll mark the 
play. 

Prologue. For tis, and for our tragedy, 

Here stooping to your cleinency, 

We beg your hearing patiently, [Exit. 

Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy ^^ of a ring? 
Ophe. 'Tis brief, my lord. 
Ham. As woman's love. 

Enter two Players, King and Queen. 

Play. K. Full thii^ty times hath Phoebus' cart^"^ gone round 
Neptune's salt 7vash and Tellus' orbed ground. 
And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheejt 
About the world have times twelve tlm-ties been, 
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands 
Unite commutual in most sacred bands. 

Play. Q. So many journeys may the Sun and Moon 
Make us again count o^er ere love be done / 
But, woe is me ! you are so sick of late. 
So far from cheer and from your former state. 
That I distrust yo u?^ Yet, though I distrust, 
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must : 
For women^sfear and love hold quantity ;'^^ 

21 That is naughty, bad ; not nothing or notight. 

22 T\\&posy is the motto, that is, words inscribed, and of course very brief. 

23 Cart, car, and chariot were used indiscriminately. — " The style," says 
Coleridge, " of the interlude here is distinguished from the real dialogue by 
rhyme, as in the first interview with the players by epic verse." 

24 " 'D'vsXxw'sX your health " ; " am solicitous about you." 

25 " Hold quantity " is have equal strength. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 141 

Tn neither aught, or in extremity. 

Now, what my love is, proof Jiath made you know; 

And as my love is sized, my fear is so : 

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear ; 

Where little fears grow great, great love grows there. 

Play. K. Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too ; 
My opei-ant ^6 powers their functions leave to do : 
And thou shall live in this fair world behind, 
Honour' d, beloved ; and haply one as kind 
For husband shall thou — 

Play. Q. O, confound the rest! 

Such love must needs be treason in my breast : 
In second husband let ?ne be accui-st ! 
None wed the second btct who kilVd the first. 

Ham. \^Aside,'] Wormwood, wormwood ! 

Play. Q. The instances ^'^ that second marriage move 
Are base i^espects of thi^ift, but none of love : 
A second time I kill 7ny husband dead. 
When second husband kisses me in bed. 

Play. K. / do believe you think what now you speak ; 
But what we do determine oft we break. 
Purpose is but the slave to memory. 
Of violent birth, but poor validity ; 
Which now, like fritit unripe, sticks on the tree, 
But fall tmshaken when they mellow be. 
Most necessary ^^ Uis that we forget 

26 " operant for active or operative. So in Tinion of Athens, iv. 3 : 
" Sauce his palate with thy most operant poison." 

27 Instances for inducements. In tlie next line, respects is considerations 
or motives, as usual in Shakespeare. 

28 Necessary here means natuml simply. So in Afcasure for Measure, ii. 
4 : " Dispossessing all my other parts of necessary fitness." 



142 HAMLET, ACT III. 

To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt : 

What to ourselves in passion we propose, 

The passion ending, doth the purpose lose. 

The violence of either grief or joy 

Their own enactures ^^ with themselves destroy : 

Where joy most I'evels, grief doth most lament ; 

Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident. 

This world is 7iot for aye ; nor ^tis not strange 

That even our loves should with our fortunes change ; 
For ^tis a question left us yet to prove, 

Whether love lead fortune or else fortune love. 

The great man down, you mark, his favourite flies ; 

The poor advanced makes friends of enemies : 
And hitherto doth love on fortune tend ; 
For who not needs shall never lack a friend ; 
And who in want a hollow friend doth try, 
Directly seasons him his enemy. 
Bttt, orderly to end where I begun, 

Our wills and fates do so contrary run, 
That our devices still ai^e overthrown ; 

Ou-r thoughts are ows, their ends noite of our own : ^^ 
So, think thou wilt no second husband wed ; 
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead. 

Play. Q. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light ! 
Sport and repose lock from me day and night / 
To desperation turn my trust and hope / 
An anchor'' s cheer ^^ in prison be my scope ! 
Fach opposite, that blanks the face of joy, ^'^ 

29 Enactures for determinations ; what they enact. 

so That is, we can control our thoughts, but not their results. 

31 A hermit's fare, or diet. Anchor for anchoret, an old word for hermit. 

32 To blank the face is to make it white ; to take the blood out of it. The 
proper colour of joy is ruddy. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 43 

Meet what I would have well, and it destroy ! 
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, 
If, once a widow, ever I be wife / 

Ham. If she should break it now ! 

Play. K. ^Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile : 
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile 
The tedious day with sleep. [Sleeps. 

Play. Q. Sleep rock thy brain ; 

And never come mischance between us twain / [Exit. 

Ham. Madam, how like you this play ? 

Queen. The lady protests too much, methinks. 

Ham. O, but she'll keep her word. 

King. Have you heard the argument ? Is there no 
offence in't ? 

Ham. No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest ; no of- 
fence i' the world. 

King. What do you call the play ? 

Ham. The Mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically.^^ This 
play is the image of a murder done in Vienna : Gonzago is 
the King's name ; his wife, Baptista : you shall see anon ; 
'tis a knavish piece of work: but what o' that? your Maj- 
esty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not : let the 
galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.34 

Enter Lucianus. 

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King. 

Ophe. You are as good as a chorus,^^ my lord. 

. 33 Tropically \% figuratively, or in the way of trope. 

3* The allusion is to a horse wincing as the saddle galls his withers. 

35 The use to which Shakespeare put the chorus may be seen in King 
Henry V. Every motion or puppet-show was accompanied by an interpreter 
or showman. 



144 HAMLET, ACT III. 

Ham. I could interpret between you and your love,^^ if I 
could see the puppets dallying. 

Ophe. You are keen, my lord, you are keen. 

Ham. Begin, murderer ; pox ! leave thy damnable faces, 
and begin. Come : The croaking raven doth bellow for r^- 
vengep 

Luci. Thoughts blacky hands apt, drugs fit, and time 
agreeing; 
Confederate season, else no creature seeing : ^^ 
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, 
With Hecate'' s ban thrice blasted^^ thrice infected. 
Thy natural magic and dire property, 
On wholesome life usurp immediately. 

[Pours the poison into the sleeper's ear. 

Ham, He poisons him i' the garden for's estate. His 
name's Gonzago : the story is extant, and writ in choice 
Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love 
of Gonzago 's wife. 

Ophe. The King rises ! 

Ham. What, frighted with false fire !* 

Queen. How fares my lord ? 

Polo. Give a'er the play ! 

King. Give me some light ! — away ! 

All. Lights, lights, lights ! 

\_Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio. 

86 Love for lover; a very common usage. 

37 " The croaking raven," &c., is probably a quotation from some play 
then well known. The raven's croak was thought to be ill-boding. 

38 No creature but time looking on, and that a confederate in the act, or 
conspiring with the murderer. 

39 Poisonous weeds were supposed to be more poisonous if gathered in 
the night. Hecate was the name given to the Queen of the witches ; and 
her banning or cursing brought the poison to the highest intensity. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. * 1 45 

Ham. Why, let the strucken deer go weep, 
The hart ungalled play ; ^o 
For some must watch, while some must sleep : 
So runs the world away. 
Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers,'^! — if the rest of 
my fortunes turn Turk with me, — with two Provincial roses 
on my razed shoes,^^ get me a fellowship in a cry of players, 
-«ir?43 

Hora. Half a share.^^ 

*o It is said that a deer, when badly wounded, retires from the herd, and 
goes apart, to weep and die. Of course, hart is the same as deer, and un- 
galled the opposite of strucken. 

41 Alluding, probably, to a custom which the London players seem to 
have had in Shakespeare's time, of flaunting it in gaudy apparel, and with 
plumes in their caps, the more the better. So in Chapman's Monsieur 
D Olive, 1606, iii. i : " Three of these goldfinches I have entertained for my 
followers : I am ashamed to train 'em abroad ; they say I carry a whole 
forest of feathers with me." Some one calling himself a Soldier wrote to 
Secretary Walsingham in 1586, complaining, " It is a woeful sight, to see 
two huxidxed. proud players Jet in their silks, -vfYvQ-VQ five hundred poor people 
starve in the streets." — To tufn Turk with any one was to desert or betray 
him, or turn traitor to him. A common phrase of the time. 

42 Provincial roses took their name from Provijts, in Lower Brie, and not 
from Provence. Razed shoes are most probably embroidered shoes. To 
race, or raze, was to stripe. So in Markham's Country Farm, speaking of 
wafer cakes : " Baking all together between two irons, having within them 
many raced and checkered draughts after the manner of small squares." 

43 " A fellowship in a cry of players " is a partnership in a company of 
players. The Poet repeatedly uses cry thus for set, pack, or 'troop. The 
word was borrowed 'from the chase, as hounds were selected for a pack 
according to their barking tones, so as to make a harmonious or musical 
cry. 

44 The players were paid not by salaries, but by shares or portions of the 
profit, according to merit. Perhaps, however, the allusion is rather to the 
custom, then in vogue, of making the theatrical property a joint-stock affair. 
Thus Shakespeare himself was a stockholder in the Globe theatre, and so 
had not only his portion of the profits as one of the players, but also an 
income from the money invested, or from the shares he held in the stock. 



146 HAMLET, 



ACT III. 



Ham. A whole one, ay. 

For thou dost know^ O Damon dear, 

This realm dismantled was 
Of Jove himself ; ^^ and now reigns here 
A very, very — pajock^^ 
Hora. You might have rhymed.'^^ 

Ham. O good Horatio, I'll take the Ghost's word for a 
thousand 'pound. Didst perceive ? 
Hora. Very well, my lord. 
Ham. Upon the talk of the poisoning? 
Hora. I did very well note him. 

Ha7n. Ah, ha ! Come, some music ! come, the record- 
ers l^S— 

45 The meaning is, that Denmark was robbed of a king who had the 
majesty of Jove. — Hamlet calls Horatio Damon, in allusion to the famous 
friendship of Damon and Pythias. 

46 Pajock is probably an old form of peacock. Dyce says he has " often 
heard the lower classes in the north of Scotland call the peacock peajock." 
Editors have been greatly in the dark as to the reason of the word's being 
used here. But a writer in The Edinburgh Review, October, 1872, shows 
that in the popular belief of Shakespeare's time the peacock had a very bad 
character, " being, in fact, the accredited representative of inordinate pride 
and envy, as well as of unnatural cruelty and lust." And he quotes from 
what was then the most popular manual of natural history : " The peacocke 
is a bird th-at loveth not his young, for the male searcheth out the female, 
and seeketh out her egges for to break them, that he may so occupy him the 
more in his lecherie. And he wondereth at the fairenesse of his fethers, and 
areareth them up as it were a circle about his head, a^d then he looketh to 
his feet, and seeth the fouleness of his feet, and lyke as he were ashamed he 
leteth his fethers fall sodeinlye. And as one sayth, he hath the voice of a 
feend, the- head of a serpent, and the pace of a theefe." The writer adds 
that " in the whole fauna of the time Hamlet could not have selected the 
name of bird or beast that expressed with greater emphasis the hateful 
union of corrupted passion and evil hfe that now usurped the throne of 
Denmark." • 

*' Ass was often used as a rhyme to was. 

48 The recorder was a soft-toned instrument, something like the flute. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 147 

For if the King like not the comedy, 
Why then, behke, — he hkes it not, perdy.^^ — 
Come, some music ! 

Re-enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

Guild. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you. 

Ham. Sir, a whole history. 

Guild. The King, sir, — 

Ham. Ay, sir, what of him? 

Guild. — is in his retirement marvellous distemper'd. 

Ham. With drink, sir? 

Guild. No, my lord, with choler. 

Ham. Your wisdom should show itself m©re richer to sig- 
nify this to his doctor ; for, for me to put him to his purga- 
tion would perhaps plunge him into more choler. 

Guild. Good my lord, put your discourse into some 
frame, and start not so wildly from my affair. 

Ham. I am tame, sir : pronounce. 

Guild. The Queen your mother, in most great affliction 
of spirit, hath sent me to you. 

Ham. You are welcome. 

Guild. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the 
right breed. If it shall please you to make me a wholesome 
answer, I will do your mother's commandment ; if not, your 
pardon and my return shall be the end of my business. 

Ha7n. Sir, I cannot. 

Guild. What, my lord ? 

So in Paradise Lost, i.: "They move in perfect phalanx to the Dorian 
mood of flutes and soft recorders:' To record was also used for to warble or 
sing. Thus in Drayton's Eclogues : " Fair Philomel, night-music of the 
Spring, sweetly records her tuneful harmony," 
*9 Perdy is a corruption of the French /ar Dieu. 



148 HAMLET, ACT III. 

Ham. Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's dis- 
eased : but, sir, such answer as I can make, you shall com- 
mand ; or, rather, as you say, my mother : therefore no 
more, but to the matter : My mother, you say, — 

Rosen. Then thus she says : Your behaviour hath struck 
her into amazement and admiration.^^ 

Ham. O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother ! 
— But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's ad- 
miraetion ? Impart. 

Rosen. She desires to speak with you in her closet, ere 
you go to bed. 

Ham. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. 
Have you any further trade with us ? 

Rosen. My lord, you once did love me. 

Ham. So I do still, by these pickers and stealers.^! 

Rosen. Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? 
you do, surely, bar the door upon your own liberty, if you 
deny your griefs to your friend. 

Ham. Sir, I lack advancement. 

Rosen. How can that be, when you have the voice of the 
King himself for your succession in Denmark ? 

Ha7n. Ay, sir, but While the grass grows, — the proverb 
is something musty.^^ — 

Re-enter Players with recorders. 

O, the recorders ! let me see one. — To wdthdraw with you : 

60 Admiration, again, in its proper Latin sense of wonder. 

61 This is explained by a clause in the Church Catechism : " To keep 
my ha?»ds from picking and stealing." — In " So I do still," so is emphatic, 
and strongly ironical. 

52 " The musty proverb " is, " Whylst grass doth growe, oft sterves the 
seely steede." 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 149 

\_Takes GuiLDENSTERN aside.'] Why do you go about to re- 
cover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a 
toil? 53 

Guild. O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is 
too unmannerly.5^ 

Ham. I do not well understand that. Will you play 
upon this pipe ? 

Guild. My lord, I cannot. 

Ham. I pray you. 

Guild, Believe me, I cannot. 

Ham. I do beseech you. 

Guild. I know no touch of it, my lord. 

Ham. 'Tis as easy as lying : govern these ventages with 
your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and 
it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are 
the stops. 55 

Guild. But these cannot I command to any utterance of 
harmony ; I have not the skill. 

Ham. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you 
make of me ! You would play upon me ; you would seem 
to know my stops ; you would pluck out the heart of my 
mystery ; you would sound me from my lowest note to the 
top of my compass : and there is much music, excellent 
voice, in this little organ ; yet cannot you make it speak. 
'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be play'd on than a 

53 " To recover the wifid of me " is a term borrowed from hunting, and 
means to take advantage of the animal pursued, by getting to the windward 
of it, that it may not scent its pursuers. — Toil is snare or trap. 

54 Hamlet may well say, " I do not well understand that." The mean- 
ing, however, seems to be, " If I am using an unmannerly boldness with 
you, it is my love that makes me do so." 

55 The ventages are the holes of the pipe. Stops signifies the mode of 
stopping the ventages so as to make the notes. 



150 HAMLET, ACT III. 

pipe? Call me what instrument you will, tliough you can 
fret me,^^ you cannot play upon me. — 

Re-enter Polonius. 
God bless you, sir ! 

Polo. My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and 
presently. 

Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of 
a camel ? 

Polo. By the Mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. 

Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel. 

Polo. It is backed like a weasel. 

Ham. Or like a whale ? 

Polo. Very like a whale. 

Ham. Then will I come to my mother by-and-by. — 
\_Aside.'\ They fool me to the top of my bent.^"^ — I will 
come by-and-by. 

Polo. I will say so. \_Exit Polonius. 

Ham. By-and-by is easily said. — Leave me, friends. — 

[^Exeunt all but Hamlet. 
'Tis now the very witching-time of night. 
When churchyards yawn,^^ and Hell itself breathes out 
Contagion to this world : now could I drink hot blood, 
And do such bitter business as the day 
Would quake to look on. Soft ! now to my mother. — 

56 Hamlet keeps up the allusion to a musical instrument. T\\q. frets of a 
lute or guitar are the ridges crossing the finger-board, upon which the 
strings are pressed or stopped. A quibble is intended on /ret. 

57 They humour me to the full height of my inclination. Polonius has 
been using the method, common in the treatment of crazy people, of assent- 
ing to all that Hamlet says. This is what Hamlet refers to. 

58 Churchyards yawn to let forth the ghosts, who did all their walking in 
the night. And the crimes which darkness so often covers might well be 
spoken of as caused by the nocturnal contagion of Hell. 



SCENE III. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 151 

heart, lose not thy nature ; let not ever 
The soul of Nero ^^ enter this firm bosom : 
Let me be cruel, not unnatural. 

1 will speak daggers to her, but use none ; 
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites : 
How in my words soever she be shent,^^ 

To give them seals never, my soul, consent ! \^Exit. 

Scene HI. — A Room in the Castle. 
Enter the King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern. 

King. I like him not ; nor stands it safe with us 
To let hig madness range. Therefore prepare you : 
I your commission will forthwith dispatch, 
And he to England shall along with you. 
The terms of our estate may not endure 
Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow 
Out of his lunacies. . 

Guild. We will ourselves provide : 

Most holy and religious fear it is 
To keep those many many bodies safe 
That live and feed upon your Majestv. 

Rosen. The single and peculiar life is bound, 
With all the strength and armour of the mind, 
To keep itself from 'noyance ; but much more 
That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest 

59 Nero is aptly referred to here, as he was the murderer of his mother, 
Agrippina. It may be worth noting that the name of the King in this play 
is Claudius; and that, after the death of Domitius her husband, Agrippina 
married with her uncle the Emperor Claudius. 

60 To shend is to injure, whether by reproof, blows, or otherwise. Shake- 
speare generally uses shent for reproved, threatened with angry words. " To 
give his words seals " is therefore to carry his punishment beyond reproof. 
The allusion is to the sealing of a deed to render it effective. 



152 HAMLET, ACT III, 

The lives of many. The cease of majesty 
Dies not alone ; 1 but like a gulf doth draw 
What's near it with it : 'tis a massy wheel, 
Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount, 
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things 
Are mortised and adjoin'd ; which when it falls, 
Each small annexment, petty consequence, 
Attends the boisterous ruin. Ne'er alone 
Did the King sigh, but with a g^aneral groan. 

King. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage ; 
For we will fetters put upon this fear, 
Which now goes too free-footed. 

y^ ■y] \ We will haste us. 

(jrUlld. ) 

\_Exezmt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

Enter Polonius. 

Polo. My lord, he's going to his mother's closet. 
Behind the arras I'll convey myself, 
To hear the process ; I'll warrant she'll tax him home : ^ 
And, as you said, and wisely was it said, 
'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, 
Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear 
The speech of vantage. ^ Fare you well, my Uege : 
I'll call upon you ere you go to bed. 
And tell you what I know. 

1 Tautological in word, but not in sense. The cease {decease) of majesty 
comes not alone. 

2 Home as a general intensive, meaning thoroughly, to the utmost. 

3 Speech having an advantage in that nature makes the speakers partial 
to each other. This favours the conclusion that the Queen was not privy 
and consenting to the murder of Hamlet's father. Both the King and Polo- 
nius have some distrust of her. 



SCENE III. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 53 

Ki7ig. Thanks, dear my lord. — 

\_Exit POLONIUS 

O, my offence is rank, it smells to Heaven ; 

It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, 

A brother's murder ! Pray can I not : 

Though inclination be as sharp as will, 

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent \ '^ 

And, like a man to double business bound, 

I stand in pause where I shall first begin, 

And both^ neglect. What if this cursed hand 

Were thicker than itself with brother's blood. 

Is there not rain enough in the sweet Heavens 

To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy 

But to confront the visage of offence ? 

And what's in prayer but this twofold force, — 

To be forstalled ere we come to fall. 

Or pardon'd being down ? ^ Then I'll look up j 

My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer 

Can serve my turn ? Forgive me my foul murder ? 

That cannot be ; since I am still possess'd 

Of those effects for which I did the murder. 

My crown, mine own ambition, and my Queen. 

May one be pardon'd, and retain th' offence ? 

In the corrupted 'currents of this world 

Offence's gilded hand may shove -by justice ; 

* " Though I were not only wiUing but strongly inclined to pray, my 
guilt would prevent me." The distinction here implied is philosophically 
just. The inclination is the craving or the impulse to assuage his pangs of 
remorse ; the will is the determination of the reason or judgment in a ques- 
tion of duty and right. 

5 Both refers to the two matters of business implied in double. 

6 That is, either to h^ prevented from falling, or to be pardoned after we 
have fallen. Alluding to a part of the Lord's Prayer. 



154 HAMLET, ACT III. 

And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself 

Buys out the law : but 'tis not so above ; 

There is no shuffling, — there the action lies 

In his true nature ; and we ourselves compell'd, 

Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, 

To give-in evidence. What then? what rests?''' 

Try what repentance can ? what can it not ? 

Yet what can it when one cannot repent ? 

O wretched state ! O bosom black as death ! 

O limed soul,^ that struggling to be free 

Art more engaged ! Help, angels ! Make assay ! 

Bow, stubborn knees ; and, heart with strings of steel, 

Be soft as sinews of a new-born babe ! 

All may be well.^ \Retires and kneels. 

Enter Hamle-r"- 

Ham. Now might I do it pat, now he is praying ; 
And now I'll do't, — And so he goes to Heaven ! — 
And so am I revenged? That would be scann'd : ^^ 
A villain kills my father ; and, for that, 
I, his sole son, do this same villain send 
To Heaven. 
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge. 

7 " What rejnains to be done ? " or, " What else can I do ? " 

8 Alluding to an old mode of catching birds, by spreading upon the 
twigs, where they are likely to light, a sticky substance called bird-lime. 
The birds were thus caught and held by the feet, and the more they tried to 
get away, the more they couldn't. The thing grew to be a common figure 
for any sort of snare. Shakespeare often uses it so. 

^ The final "All may be well" is remarkable; — the degree of merit 
attributed by the self-flattering soul to its own struggles, though baffled, and 
to the indefinite half promise, half command, to persevere in religious 
duties.— Coleridge. 

'^'^ T\i3X should \iQ scrutinized. See page 48, note ii. 



SCENE III. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 55 

He took my father grossly, full of bread ; 

With all his crimes ^^ broad blown, as flush as May ; 

And how his audit stands who knows save Heaven ? 

But, in our circumstance and course of thought,!^ 

'Tis heavy with him : and am I then revenged. 

To take him in the purging of his soul. 

When he is fit and season'd for his passage ? 

No! 

Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent : ^^ 

When he is drunk- asleep, or in his rage ; 

At gaming, swearing ; or about some act 

That has no relish of salvation in't : 

Then trip him, that his heels may kick at Heaven ; 

And that his soul may be as damn'd and black 

As Hell, whereto it goes.^"^ My mother stays : 

This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.^^ \_Exit 

11 Crimes in the more general sense of sins. So twice before in this play : 
" The foul crimes done in my days of nature " ; and, " Having ever seen in 
the prenominate crimes the youth you breathe of." — In the preceding line, 
grossly goQ.% with father as an adjective. Perhaps it should be printed 
grossly-full. 

12 " Circumstance and course of thought " seems to mean the particular 
data or circumstantial detail of things from which our thought shapes its 
course and draws its conclusions. 

13 Hent, both noun and verb, was used in the sense of seizure, grasp, or 
hold. Hqre it has the kindred sense oi purpose. 

14 Hamlet here flies off to a sort of ideal revenge, in order to quiet his 
filial feelings without violating his reason. Yet it is a very mark-worthy 
fact, that the King is taken at last in the perpetration of crimes far worse 
than any that Hamlet here anticipates. But that, to be sure, is the Poet's 
ordering of the matter, and perhaps should be regarded as expressing his 
sense of justice in this case ; though Hamlet may well be supposed to have 
a presentiment, that a man so bad, and so secure in his badness, will not 
rest where he is ; but will proceed to some further exploiting in crime, in 
the midst of which judgm'ent will at last overtake him. 

15 This physic refers to the reasons Hamlet has been giving for not strik- 



156 HAMLET, ACT III. 

King. \^Rising^ My words fly up, my thoughts remain 
below : 
Words without thoughts never to Heaven go. \_Exit. 

Scene IV. — The Queen's Closet. 
Enter the Queen and Polonius. 

Polo. He will come straight. Look you lay home to him : 
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with ; 
And that your Grace hath screen'd and stood between 
Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here. 
Pray you, be round with him. 

Ham. [ Within.'] Mother, mother, mother ! 

Queen. I'll warrant you ; 

Fear me not. Withdraw ; I hear him coming. 

[Polonius hides behind the arras. 

Enter Hamlet. 

Ham. Now, mother, what's the matter? 
Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. 
Ham. Mother, you have my father much offended. 
Queen. Come, come ; you answer with an idle tongue. 
Ham. Go, go ; you question with a wicked tongue. 
Queen. Why, how now, Hamlet ! what's the matter now ? 
Have you forgot me ? 

Ham. No, by the rood,i not so : 

ing now ; a medicine that prolongs the King's sickness, but does not heal 
it ; that is, the purpose is delayed, not abandoned. 

1 Rood is an old word for cross ; often used for an oath, as here. — in re- 
gard to what immediately follows in this scene. Professor Werder has the 
following : " Enraged, frantic, he rushes in wildly to his mother, and here, 
hearing the voice behind the tapestry, here, now supposing the King to be 
hidden there, he allows himself to be carried away by his hot blood, by rage, 



SCENE IV. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 157 

You are the Queen, your husband's brother's wife ; 
And — would it were not so ! — you are my mother. 

Queen. Nay, then I'll set those to you that can speak. 

Hain, Come, come, and sit you down ; you shall not 
budge : 
You go not till I set you up a glass 
Where you may see the inmost part of you. 

Queen. What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me? — 
Help, help, ho ! 

Polo. [^Behind.'] What, ho ! help, help, help ! 

Ham. \_Drawing.'\ How now ! a rat ? Dead, for a ducat, 
dead ! \_Makes a pass through the arras. 

Polo. \_Behind.~\ O, I am slain ! \Falls and dies. 

Queen. O me ! what hast thou done ? 

Ham. Nay, I know not : is it the King ? 

Queen. O, what a rash and bloody deed is this ! 

Ham. A bloody deed ! almost as bad, good mother, 
As kill a king, and marry with his brother. 

Queen. As kill a king ! 

Ham, Ay, lady, 'twas my word, — 

\_Lifts up the arras and discovers Polonius. 
Thou wretched, rash-intruding fool, farewell ! 
I took thee for thy better : take thy fortune ; 
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger. — 

here, where the worst personal dishonour which has been inflicted upon 
him, the hving son, by the seducer of his mother, comes so near to him ; 
here, where the whole air is full of it ; here the voice of the wretch calls up 
all his shame ; and, forgetting the strict obligation of his task, he gives full 
course to his thirst for vengeance ; he is carried away into the grave error 
of plunging his sword through the tapestry. A grave error indeed ! He 
^a^ made the thrust at last, — and what is the consequence? Instead of 
being freed from the old burden, he has brought upon his soul a new one. 
Thus the error punishes itself," — See, also, the Introduction, page 25. 



158 HAMLET, 



ACT III. 



Leave wringing of your hands : peace ! sit you down, 

And let me wring your heart : for so I shall, 

If it be made of penetrable stuff; 

If damned custom have not brass'd it so, 

That it is proof and bulwark against sense. 

Queen, What have I done, that thou darest wag thy 
tongue 
In noise so rude against me ? 

Ham. Such an act 

That blurs the grace and blush of modesty ; 
Calls virtue hypocrite j^ takes off the rose 
From the fair forehead of an innocent love, 
And sets a blister there ; makes marriage -vows 
As false as dicers' oaths : O, such a deed 
As from the body of contraction plucks 
The very soul ; ^ and sweet religion makes 
A rhapsody of words : Heaven's face doth glow ; 
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,'* 
With tristful visage, as against the doom. 
Is thought-sick at the act. 

Queen. Ah me, what act, 

That roars so loud and thunders in the index P^ 

2 A thing is often said to do that which it any way causes to be done. 

3 Contraction here means the marriage contract ; of which Hamlet holds 
religion to be the life and soul, insomuch that without this it is but as a life- 
less body, and must soon become a nuisance. 

4 This solid globe, the Earth. Hamlet in his high-wrought stress of pas- 
sion, kindling as he goes on, makes the fine climax, that not only the 
heavenly powers burn with indignation, but even the gross beings of this 
world are smitten with grief and horror, as if the day of judgment were at 
hand. 

5 The index, or table of contents, was formerly placed at the beginning 
of books. In Othello, ii. i, we have, "an index and obscure prologue to the 
history of lust and foul thoughts." 



SCENE IV. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 59 

Ham. Look here upon this picture, and on this, 
The counterfeit presentment ^ of two brothers. 
See what a grace was seated on tliis brow ; 
Hyperion's curls ; the front of Jove himself ; "^ 
An eye Hke Mars, to threaten and command ; 
A station^ like the herald Mercury 
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill ; 
A combination and a form indeed, 
Where every god did seem to set his seal, 
To give the world assurance of a man : 
This was your husband. Look you now what follows : 
Here is your husband ; like a mildew'd ear, 
Blasting his wholesome brother .^ Have you eyes? 
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, 
And batten 1^ on this moor? Ha ! have you eyes? 
You cannot call it love ; for at your age 
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble. 
And waits upon the judgment : and what judgment 
Would step from this to this ? Sense, sure, you have. 
Else could you not have motion ; but, sure, that sense 
Is apoplex'd : ^^ for madness would not err, 

6 Counterfeit presentment, or counterfeit simply, was used for likeness. It 
is to be supposed that Hamlet wears a miniature of his father, while his 
mother wears one of the present King. 

7 The statues of Jupiter represented him as the most intellectual of all 
the gods, as Apollo was the most beautiful ; while in Mercury we have the 
ideal of swiftness and despatch. 

8 Station does not here mean the spot where any one is placed, but the 
act of standing, the attitude. So in Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 3 : " Her mo- 
tion and her station are as one." 

9 The allusion is to the blasted ears of corn that destroyed the full and 
good ears, in Pharaoh's dream ; Genesis, xli. 5-7. 

10 To batten is to feed rankly or grossly ; it is usually applied to the fat- 
tening of animals. 

11 There is some confusion here, owing to the different meanings with 



l6o HAMLET, ACT III. 

Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd, 

But it reserved some quantity of choice/^ 

To serve in such a difference. What devil was't, 

That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-bhnd ? ^^ 

Eyes without feehng, feeling without sight, 

Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, 

Or but a sickly part of one true sense 

Could not so mope.i^ 

O shame ! where is thy blush? Rebellious Hell, 

If thou canst mutine i^ in a matron's bones. 

To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, 

And melt in her own fire : ^^ proclaim no shame, 

When the compulsive ardour gives the charge, 

Since frost itself as actively doth burn, 

i^.nd reason panders will. 

which serise is used. The first setise is sensation as necessary to bodily mo- 
tion ; the second refers to the mind, and comes pretty near meaning reason. 
The idea seems to be, that her reason must be not merely unseated, as in 
madness, but absolutely quenched. — In " madness would not err," the mean- 
ing is, " madness would not so err." 

12 Sense was never so dominated by the delusions of insanity, but that it 
still retained some power of choice. We have before had quantity in much 
the same sense. See page 140, note 25. 

• 13 Hoodman-blind is the old game of blindman' s-huff. 

14 To mope is to be dull and stupid. 

15 Mutine for mutiny. This is the old form of the verb. Shakespeare 
calls mtitineers mutines in a subsequent scene. 

16 The views here set forth by Hamlet are very different from those of 
Polonius in his advice to Laertes, as remarked upon in note 22, page 72. 
Hamlet seems to think that generous passions are the proper safety of 
youth, and he would keep the soul sweet by setting it on fire with moral 
beauty. The author of Ecce Homo has an apt passage in point : " How 
can warmth cleanse ? The answer is, that moral warmth does cleanse. No 
heart is pure that is not passionate ; no virtue is safe that is not enthusias- 
tic." The case is well-nigh desperate indeed, when the ardour of youth, 
which is the proper life of virtue, becomes itself the death of virtue. 



SCENE IV. PRINCE OF DENMARK. l6l 

Queen. O Hamlet, speak no more ! 

Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul ; 
And there I see such black and grained ^'^ spots 
As will not leave their tinct. 

Ham. Nay, but to live 

Stew'd in corruption, — 

Queen. O, speak to me no more ! 

These words like daggers enter in mine ears : 
No more, sweet Hamlet ! 

Ham. A murderer and a villain ; 

A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe 
Of your precedent lord ; a Vice of kings ; ^^ 
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, 
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,^^ 
And put it in his pocket '! 

Queen. No more ! 

Ham. A king of shreds and patches, — 

Enter the Ghost. 

Save me and hover o'er me with your wings, 

You heavenly guards ! — What would your gracious figure ? 

Queen. Alas, he's mad ! 

Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to chide, 

17 " Grained spots " are spots ingrained, or dyed in the grain, so that they 
will not part with their colour, or lose their tinct. 

18 An allusion to the old Vice or jester, a stereot5^ed character in the 
Moral-plays, which were going out of usq in the Poet's time. The Vice 
wore a motley or patchwork dress ; hence the sJireds and patches applied in 
this instance. 

19 This should not be taken as meaning that Claudius is not the lawful 
King of Denmark. He " stole the diadem," not by an act of usurpation, 
but by murdering the rightful holder of it. 



l62 HAMLET, 



ACT III. 



That, lapsed in time and passion^^o lets go by 
Tk' important acting of your dread command ? 
O, say ! 

Ghost. Do not forget. This visitation 
Is but to whet thy almost-blunted purpose. 
But, look, amazement on thy mother sits : 
O, step between her and her fighting soul ! 
Conceit in weakest bodies ^^ strongest works. 
Speak to her, Hamlet. 

Ham. How is 't with you, lady? 

Queen. Alas, how is't with you. 
That you do bend your eye on vacancy. 
And with th' incorporal air do hold discourse ? 
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep \ 
And, as the sleeping soldiers in th' alarm, 
Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,^^ 
Start up, and stand on end. O gentle son, 
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper 
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 

Ham. On him, on him ! Look you, how pale he glares ! 
His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones. 
Would make them capable.^"^ — Do not look upon me ; 
Lest with this piteous action you convert 
My stern affects : ^^ then what I have to do . 

20 The sense appears to be, having failed in respect both of time and of 
purpose. Or it rftky be, having allowed passion to cool by lapse of time. 

21 Conceit, again, for conception, imagination. Bodies is here put for 
minds, or persons ; as corpora also is in classical Latin. 

22 That is, like excrements alive, or having life in them. Hair, nails, 
feathers, &c., were called excrements, as being without life. 

23 Would put sense and understanding into them. The use of capable 
for susceptible, intelligent, is not peculiar to Shakespeare. 

** Affects is repeatedly used by Shakespeare for affections or passions» 



SCENE IV. PRINCE OF DENMMIK. 1 63 

Will wapt true colour ; tears, perchance, for bloofl. 

Queen. To whom do you speak this ? 

Ham. Do you see nothing there ? 

Queen. Nothing at all ; yet all that is I see. 

Ha77i. Nor did you nothing hear? 

Queen, No, nothing but ourselves. 

Ham. Why, look you there ! look, how it steals away ! 
My father, in his habit as he lived ! 
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal ! 

\^Exit Ghost. 

Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain : 
This bodiless creation ecstasy 
Is very cunning in.^^ 

Ham. Ecstasy ! 

My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, 
And makes as healthful music : 'tis not madness 
That I have utter'd : bring me to the test. 
And I the matter will re-word ; which madness 
Would gambol from.^ Mother, for love of grace, 

and may signify any mood or temper of mind looking to action. Hamlet is 
afraid lest the " piteous action " of the Ghost should make his stern mood 
or temper of revenge give place to tenderness, so that he will see the minis- 
try enjoined upon him i^ a false light, and go to shedding tears instead of 
blood. 

25 The Ghost in this scene, as al&o in the banquet-scene of Macbeth, is 
plainly what we should call a subjective ghost ; that is, existing only in the 
heated imagination of the beholder. As the Queen says, insanity is very 
fertile in such " bodiless creations." It is not so with the apparition in the 
former scenes, as the Ghost is there seen by other persons. To be sure, it 
was part of the old belief, that ghosts could, if they chose, make themselves 
visible only to those with whom they were to deal ; but this is just what we 
mean by subjective. The ancients could not take the idea of subjective 
visions, as we use the term. So that the words here put into the Ghost's 
mouth are to be regarded as merely the echo of Hamlet's own thoughts. 

26 Mad people, if asked to repeat a thing that they have just said, are apt 



1 64 HAMLET, ACT III, 

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, 

That not your trespass but my madness speaks : 

It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, 

Whilst rank corruption, mining all within. 

Infects unseen. Confess yourself to Heaven ; 

Repent what's past, avoid what is to come ; 

And do not spread the compost on the weeds. 

To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue ; 

For in the fatness of these pursy times 

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, 

Yea, courb ^^ and woo for leave to do him good. 

Queen. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain. 

Ham. O, throw away the worser part of it, 
And live the purer with the other half. 
•Good night : but go not to my uncle's bed ; 
Assume a virtue, if you have it not. 
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat 
Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,^^ 
That to the use of actions fair and good 
He likewise gives a frock or livery. 
That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night. 
And that shall lend a kind of easiness , 
To the next abstinence : the next more easy ; 
For us,e almost can change the stamp of nature, 

to go on and say something else without knowing it ; thus gamboling from 
the matter which they undertake to re-word. But the test is far from being 
a sure one ; madmen being sometimes as firm and steady in the intellectual 
faculties as the sanest are, 

2" To court is to bend, curve, or truckle ; from the French courber. 

28 The rneaning appears to be, that, though custom is a monster that eats 
out all sensibility or consciousness of evil habits ; yet, on the other hand, it is 
an angel in this respect, that it works in a manner equally favourable to 
good actions. — In this passage custom, habit, and use all have about the 
same meaning ; I mean the second use, — " For use almost," &c. 



SCENE IV. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 65 

And either shame the Devil or throw him out ^9 
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night : 
And when you are desirous to be blest, 
I'll blessing beg of you.^^ For this same lord, 

\_Pointing to Polonius. 
I do repent : but Heaven hath pleased it so, 
To punish me with this and this with me, 
That I must be their ^^ scourge and minister. 
I will bestow him, and will answer well 
The death I gave him. So, again, good night. — • 
\^Aside.'] I must be cruel, only to be kind : 
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind. — 
One word more, good lady. 

Queen. What shall I do ? 

Hai7i. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do : 
Let the bloat ^^ King tempt you again to bed ; 
Pinch wanton on your cheek ; call you his mouse j ^^ 
And let him, for a pair of reechy^^ kisses. 
Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers, 
Make you to ravel all this matter out, 
That I essentially am not in madness, 

29 The sense of out extends back over shavie as well as over throw ; the 
meaning being, " And either shame the Devil out or force him out." See 
Critical Notes. 

30 How beautiful this is! Of course Hamlet means that, when he finds 
his mother on her knees to God, he will be on his knees to her. 

31 The pronoun their refers to Heaven, which is here used as a collective 
noun, and put for heavefily powers. 

32 Bloat for bloated. Many preterites were formed so. See page 56, 
note 7. 

33 Mouse was a term of endearment. Thus Burton, in his Anatomy of 
Melancholy : " Pleasant names may be invented, bird, mouse, lamb, puss, 
pigeon." 

34 jReeky and reechy are the same word, and applied to any vaporous 
exhalation. 



1 66 HAMLET, ACT III. 

But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know ; 
For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise. 
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,^^ 
Such dear concernings hide ? who would do so ! 
No, in despite of sense and secrecy. 
Unpeg the basket on the house's top. 
Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape. 
To try conclusions,^^ in the basket creep, 
And break your own neck down. 

Queen. Be thou assured, if words be made of breath, 
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe 
What thou hast said to me. 

Hmn, I must to England ; you know that ? 

Queen. Alack, 

I had forgot : 'tis so concluded on. 

. Ham. There's letters seal'd \ and my two schoolfellows, — 
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd, — 
They bear the mandate ; they must sweep my way. 
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work ; 
For 'tis the sport to have the engineer 
Hoist with his own petar : 37 and't shall go hard 
But I will delve one yard below their mines. 
And blow them at the Moon. O, 'tis most sweet'' 
When in one line two crafts directly meet ! 
This man shall set me packing : 

35 K paddock is a toad; 2. gib, a cat. 

36 To try conclusions is the old phrase for trying experiments, or putting 
a thing to the proof. — The passage alludes, apparently, to some fable or 
story now quite forgotten. Sir John Suckling, in one of his letters, refers to 
" the story of the jackanapes and the partridges." 

37 Hoist for hoisted, as in note 32. — Petar, now spelt petard, is a kind of 
mortar used for blowing open gates and doors. — " It shall go hard" means 
" I will try hard." Repeatedly used so by the Poet. 



SCENE V. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 167 

I'll lug the corse into the neighbour room. 
Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor 
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave, 
Who was in life a foolish-prating knave. — 
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. — • 
Good night, mother. 

\_Exeunt severally ; Hamlet draggmg in Polonius. 

Scene V. — Another Room in the Castle. 
Enter the King, the Queen, Rosencrantz, and Guilden- 

STERN. 

King. There's matter in these sighs : these profound 
heaves 
You must translate ; 'tis fit we understand them. 
Where is your son ? 

Queen. Bestow this place on us a little while. — 

\_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 
Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night ! 

King. What, Gertrude ? How does Hamlet ? 

Queen. Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend 
Which is the mightier : in his lawless fit. 
Behind the arras hearing something stir. 
He whips his rapier out, and cries A rat, a rat ! 
And in this brainish 1 apprehension kills 
The unseen good old man. 

King. O heavy deed ! 

It had been so with us, had we been there : 
His liberty is full of threats to all. 
To you yourself, to us, to every one. 
Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd ? 

1 Brainish far brainsick ; that is, crazy. 



1 68 HAMLET, ACT III. 

It will be laid to us, whose providence 

Should have kept short, restrain'd, and out of haunt,^ 

This mad young man : but so much was our love, 

We would not understand what was most fit ; 

But, like the owner of a foul disease, 

To keep it from divulging, let it feed 

Even on the pith of life.^ Where is he gone ? 

Queen. To draw apart the body he hath kill'd ; 
O'er whom his very madness, like fine ore 
Among a mineral ^ of metals base. 
Shows itself pure : he weeps for what is done. 

King. O Gertrude, come away ! 
The Sun no sooner shall the mountains touch, 
But we will ship him hence ; and this vile deed 
We must, with all our majesty and skill, 
Both countenance and excuse. — Ho, Guildenstern ! 

Re-enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

Friends both, go join you with some further aid : 
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain. 
And from his mother's closet hath he dragg'd him : 
Go seek him out ; speak fair, and bring the body 
Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this. — 

\_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 
Come, Gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends ; 

2 Out of haunt means out of company. 

3 Certain diseases appear to be attended with an instinct of concealment. 
I have heard of persons dying of external cancer ; yet they had kept so secret 
about it that their nearest friends had not suspected it. 

* Mineral for mine ; in accordance with old usage. So Hooker, in 
Ecclesiastical Polity, i. 4, 3, speaks of the fallen Angels as "being dispersed, 
some on the earth, some in the water, some amongst the minerals, dens, 
and caves, that are under the earth." 



SCENE VI. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 69 

And let them know both what we mean to do 

And what's untimely done : so, haply, slander — 

Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter, 

As level as the cannon to his blank,^ 

Transports his poison'd shot — may miss our name. 

And hit the woundless air. O, come away ! 

My soul is full of discord and dismay. \_Exeunf. 

Scene VI. — Another Room in the Castle, 
Enter Hamlet. 

Ham, Safely stowed. • 

Rosen. ) 

r '///ft ^i^^^^f^'l Hamlet ! Lord Hamlet ! 

Hani. What noise? who calls on Hamlet? O, here they 

come. 

E7iter RosENCRANTZ and Guildenstern. 

Rosen. What have you done, my lord, with the dead 
body? 

Ham. Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin. 

Rosen. Tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence 
And bear it to the chapel. 

Ham. Do not believe it. 

Rosen. Believe what? 

Ham. That I can keep your counsel and not mine own. 
Besides, to be demanded of a sponge,^ what repHcation should 
be made by the son of a king ? 

s As direct, or as sure-aimed, as the cannon to its mark. Direct is one of 
the old meanings of level. The blank was the white spot at which aim was 
taken in target-shooting. 

1 That is, on being demanded by a sponge. An instance of the infinitive 
used gerundively, or like the Latin Gerund, and equivalent, in English, to a 



lyo HAMLET, ACT III. 

Rosen. Take you me for a sponge, my lord ? 

Ham. Ay, sir ; that soaks up the King's countenance, his 
rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the King best 
service in the end : he keeps them, as an ape doth nuts, in 
the corner of his jaw; first mouth'd, to be last swallowed :^ 
when he needs what you have glean'd, it is but squeezing 
you, and, sponge, you shall ^ be dry again. 

Rosen. I understand you not, my lord. 

Ham. I am glad of it : a knavish speech sleeps in a fool- 
ish ear.^ 

Rosen. My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and 
go witlT us to the King. 

Ham. The body is with the King, but the King is not 
with the body.^ The King is a thing — 

Guild. A thing, my lord ! 

Ham. — of nothing : bring me to him. Hide fox, and all 
after.6 Exeunt. 

participle and a preposition. The usage is very frequent in Shakespeare, 
and sometimes renders his meaning rather obscure. — Replication is the 
same as reply. 

2 Apes are provided with a pouch on each side of the jaw, in which they 
stow away the food first taken, and there keep it till they have eaten the 
rest. 

3 Shall for will ; the two being often used indiscriminately. 

4 Perhaps this is best explained by a passage in Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2 : 
" A jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue 
of him that makes it." ..^ 

5 Hamlet is talking riddles, in order to tease and puzzle his questioners. 
The meaning of this riddle, to the best of my guessing, is, that the King's 
body is with the King, but not the King's soul : he's a king without kingli- 
ness. Perhaps, however, the passage should be regarded simply as a piece 
of intentional downright nonsense. 

6 " Hide fox, and all after," was a juvenile sport, most probably what is 
now called hide a?id seek. 



SCENE VII. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 171 

Scene VII. — Another Room in the Castle, 

Enter the King, attended. 

King, I have sent to seek him, and to find the body. 

How dangerous is it that this man goes loose ! 

Yet must not we put the strong law on him : 

He's loved of the distracted ^ multitude. 

Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes ; 

And where 'tis so, th' offender's scourge is weigh'd, 

But never the offence.^ To bear all smooth and even, 

This sudden sending him away must seem 

Deliberate pause : ^ diseases desperate grown 

By desperate appliance are relieved, 

Or not at all. — 

Enter Rosencrantz. 

How now ! what hath befall'n ? 
Rosen. Where the dead body is bestow'd, my lord. 
We cannot get from him. 

King. But where is he ? 

Rosen, Without, my lord ; guarded, to know your pleasure. 

King. Bring him before us. 

Rosen. Ho, Guildenstern ! bring in my lord. 

Enter Hamlet and Guildenstern. 

King. Now, Hamlet, where 's Polonius? 
Ham. At supper. 

1 Distracted in the sense of discordant, or disagreeing ; sometimes called 
■many-headed. Perhaps the sense oi fickle, i7iconsta?it, is also intended. 

2 Who like not what their judgment approves, for they have none, but 
what pleases their eyes ; and in this case the criminal's punishment is con- 
sidered, but not his crime. 

3 " To keep all things quiet and in order, this sudden act must seem a 
thing that we have paused and delibemted upon." See page 99, note ii. 



172 HAMLET, ACT III. 

King. At supper ! where ? 

Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten : a cer- 
tain convocation of poHtic worms are e'en at him.'^ Your 
worm is your only emperor for diet : we fat all creatures else 
to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king 
and your lean beggar is but variable service, — two dishes, 
but to one table : that's the end. 

King. Alas, alas ! 

Ham. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a 
king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm. 

King. What dost thou mean by this ? 

Ham. Nothing but to show you how a king may go a 
progress through" a beggar.^ 

King. Where is Polonius ? 

Ham. In Heaven ; send thither to see : if your messen- 
ger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself. 
But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall 
nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby. 

King. \To some Attendants.] Go seek him there. 

Ham. He will stay till ye come. \_Exeunt Attendants. 

King. Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety, — 
Which we do tender,^ as we dearly grieve 
For that which thou hast done, — must send thee hence 
With fiery quickness : therefore prepare thyself; 

4 Alluding, probably, to the Diet of Worms, which Protestants regarded 
as a convocation of politiciajis. Here, again, I am indebted to Mr. Joseph 
Crosby, who aptly prompts me, that there is a further allusion to the char- 
acter of Polonius ; meaning such worms as might naturally be bred in the 
carcass of a defunct old political wire-puller. And he remarks, " Had the 
old gentleman been conspicuous for his ambition, it would have been just 
like Shakespeare to call the worms bred from him aspiring worms." 

5 Alluding to the royal journeys of state, called progresses. 

To tender a thing is to be careful of it. See page'73, ^ote 27, 



SCENE VII. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 73 

The bark is ready, and the wind at help, 
Th' associates tend,"^ and every thing is bent 
For England. 

Ham. For England ! 

King. Ay, Hamlet. 

Ham. Good. 

King. So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. 

Ham. I see a cherub that sees them.^ — But, come; for 
England ! — Farewell, dear mother. 

King. Thy loving father, Hamlet. 

Ham. My mother : father and mother is man and wife ; 
man and wife is one flesh ; and so, my mother. — Come, for 
England ! S^Exit. 

King. Follow him at foot \ tempt him with speed aboard ; 
Delay it not ; I'll have him hence to-night : 
Away ! for every thing is seal'd and done 
That else leans on th' affair ; pray you, make haste. — 

\_Exetmt RosENCRANTZ and Guildenstern. 
And, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught, — 
As my great power thereof may give thee sense, 
Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red 
After the Danish sword, and thy free awe 
Pays homage to us, — thou may'st not coldly set ^ 
Our sovereign process ; which imports at full, 
By letters conjuring ^^ to that effect, 

' The associates of your voyage are waiting. — " The wind at help " means 
the wind serves, or is right, to forward you. 

8 Hamlet means that he divines them, or has an inkling of them. 

9 To set formerly meant to estimate. To set much or little by a thing, is 
to esfimate it much or little. 

10 In Shakespeare's time the two senses of coiijure had not acquired each 
its peculiar way of pronouncing the word. Here conjuring has the first 
syllable long, with the sense of earnestly entreating. 



1 74 HAMLET, ACT IV. 

The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England ; 

For like the hectic in my blood he rages, 

And thou must cure me : till I know 'tis done, 

Howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun.n \_Exit, 



ACT IV. 

Scene I. — A Plain in Denmark. 
Enter Fortinbras, a Captain, and Soldiers, marching. 

Fortin. Go, captain, from me greet the Danish King ; 
Tell him that by his license Fortinbras 
Claims the conveyance of a promised march 
Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.^ 
If that his Majesty would aught with us. 
We shall express our duty in his eye ; ^ 
And let him know so. 

Capt. I will do't, my lord. 

Fortin. Go softly on. 

\_Exeitnt Fortinbras and Soldiers. 

Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and others. 

Ham. Good sir, whose powers are these? 
Capt. They are of Norway, sir. 

11 Of course strict grammar would here require " will ne'er begin " ; the 
tense being changed for the rhyme. See page 96, note 26. 

1 The rendezvous here meant is the place where Fortinbras is to wait for 
the Captain after the latter has done his message to the King. 

2 In the Regulatio7ts for the Establishmeiitofthe Queen's Household, 1627 : 
"All such as doe service in the queen's eye." And in The Establishment of 
Prince Henry's . Household, 1610 : " All such as doe service in the prince s 
eye'.' Fortinbras means, " I will wait upon his presence, and pay my 
respects to him in person." 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 175 

Ha7n. How purposed, sir, I pray you? 

Capt, Against some part of Poland. 

Ha77i. Who commands them, sir? 

Capt. The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras. 

Ham. Goes it against the main of Poland, sir. 
Or for some frontier ? 

Capt. Truly to speak, sir, and with no addition, . 
We go to gain a little patch of ground 
That hath in it no profit but the name. 
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it ;3 
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole 
^ ranker rate, should it be sold in fee. 

Ham. Why, then the Polack never will defend it. 

Capt. Yes, 'tis already garrison'd. 

Ham. Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats 
IVill not debate the question of this straw : 
This is th' imposthume^ of much wealth and peace, 
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without 
Why the man dies. — I humbly thank you, sir. 

Capt. God b' wi' you, sir. \_Exit, 

Rosen. Will't please you go, my lord ? 

Ham. I'll be with you straight. Go a little before. — 

\_Exeunt all but Hamlet. 

3 The meaning is, " I would not pay five- ducats for the exclusive privi- 
lege of collecting all the revenue it will yield to the State. Ho farm ox farm 
out taxes is to sell commissions for collecting them, the buyers to have the 
privilege of making what they can by the process. Burke uses the word in 
a like sense in his Articles of Charge against Hastings : " The farming of 
the defence of a country, being wholly unprecedented and evidently abused, 
could have no real object but to enrich the contractors at the Company's 
expense." — To pay has the force of by paying. The infinitive again used 
gerundively. See page 169, note i. 

4 Imposthume was in common use for abscess in Shakespeare's time. It is 
a corruption of apostem. 



176 HAMLET, ACT IV. 

How all occasions do inform against me, 

And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man, 

If his chief good and market of his time 

Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. 

Sure, He that made us with such large discourse. 

Looking before and after, gave us not 

That capability and godlike reason 

To fust 5 in us unused. Now, whether it be 

Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 

Of thinking too precisely on th' event, — 

A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom 

And ever three parts coward, — I do not know 

Why yet I live to say This thing^s to do, 

Sith^ I have cause and will and strength and means 

To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me : 

Witness this army of such mass and charge, 

Led by a delicate and tender prince ; 

Whose spirit, with divine ambition pufPd,''' 

Makes mouths at the invisible event ; 

Exposing what is mortal and unsure 

To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, / 

Even for a egg-shell. Rightly to be great 

ts not to stir without great argument. 

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw 

When honour's at the stake. How stand I, then. 

That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd. 

Excitements of my reason and my blood,^ 

5 To fust is to become mouldy ; an old word now quite obsolete. 

6 Sith is merely an old form of since ; now quite out of use. 

7 Puff'd, here, is inspired or animated. — To 7nake mouths at a thing is to 
scorn it, or hold it in contempt. 

8 Provocations which excite both my reason and my passions. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 177 

And let all sleep ? while, to my shame, I see 

The imminent death of twenty thousand men, 

That for a fantasy and trick of fame 

Go to their graves like beds ; fight for a plot 

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause ; 

Which is not tomb enough and continent ^ 

To hide the slain ? O, from this time forth. 

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth ! 1^ \_Exit. 

Scene II. — Elsinore. A Room in the Castle, 

Enter the Queen and Horatio. 

Queen. I will not speak with her. 
Hora. She is importunate, indeed distract ; 1 
Her mood will needs be pitied. 

Queen. What would she have ? 

Hora. She speaks much of her father ; says she hears 

9 Continent means that which contains or encloses. " If there be no ful- 
nesse, then is the cofztinent gvea.ter than the content." — Bacon's Advance- 
ment of Learning. . 

10 Weary is Hamlet, weary under his burden. Now, when he is shipped 
off to England, the charge of murder resting on him through his own fault, 
— comparing his lot, chained as he is to his task, with that of Fortinbras. 
who is so free in all his movements, — now comes the fear that, notwithi 
standing all his trouble, all his patient endurance, his task has at last be 
come impossible. This horrible dread penetrates him to the quick, and 
weighs down his soul. How, — considering the character of his task, — how 
he is to satisfy the reason of the thing, he cannot conceive ; but he can at 
least content his blood, should he strike the decisive blow. And how it 
shrieks in his ear, how it surges over his soul ! This horrible doubt, which 
has for its background the remorse he feels for the error he has made, — 
the doubt whether he shall throw all the dictates of reason to the winds, — 
this is the demon that rules in this soliloquy, and runs wild therein ; and 
therefore I have said it is the shriek of Hamlet's agony which here relieves 
itself. — Werder. 

1 Distract for distracted ; just as bloat and hoist before. 



1 78 HAMLET, ACT IV. 

There's tricks i' the world ; and hems, and beats her heart ; 

Spurns enviously at straws ; ^ speaks things in doubt, 

That carry but half sense : her speech is nothing, 

Yet the unshaped use of it doth move 

The hearers to collection ; ^ they aim at it, 

And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts ; 

Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them, 

Indeed would make one think there might be thought, 

Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily .^ 

'Twere good she were spoken with ; for she may strew 

Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds. 

Queen. Let her come in. — \_Exit Horatio. 

To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is, 
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss : ^ 
So full of artless jealousy is guilt, 
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. 

Re-enter Horatio, with Ophelia.^ 

• Ophe. Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark? 
Queen. How now, Ophelia ! 

2 Kicks spitefully at straws. Such was the common use of spurn in the 
Poet's time. So in The Merchant, i. 3 : " And foot me as you spurn a stran- 
ger cur over your threshold." And in yulius Ccesar, iii. i : " I spurn thee 
like a cur out of my way." — E7ivy and its derivatives were commonly used 
in the sense of malice. 

3 Collection is inference or conjecture. — Aim is guess. 

4 Unhappily is here used in the sense of mischievously. 

5 Shakespeare is not singular in the use of amiss as a substantive. " Each 
toy " is each trifle. 

6 There is no part of this play in its representation on the stage more 
pathetic than this scene ; which, I suppose, proceeds from the utter insensi- 
bility Ophelia has to her own misfortunes. A great sensibility, or none at 
all, seems to produce the same effects. In the latter case the audience sup- 
ply what is wanting, and with the former they sympathize. — Sir J. REY- 
NOLDS, 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 79 

Ophe. [Sings.] How should I your true love know 
From another one ? 
By his cockle hat and staff, 
And his sandle shoon? 

Queen. Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song? 
Ophe. Say you ? nay, pray you, mark. 

[Sings.] He is dead and gone, lady, 
He is dead and gone ; 
At his head a grass-green turf, 
At his heels a stone. 

Queen. Nay, but, OpheUa, — 
Ophe. Pray you, mark. 

[Sings.] White his shroud as the mountain snow, — 
Enter the King. 
Queen. Alas, look here, my lord. 

Ophe. [Sings.] — Larded"^ with sweet flowers ; 
Which bewept to the grave did go, 
With true-love showers. 

King. How do you, pretty lady ? 

Ophe. Well, God 'ield you ! ^ They say the owl was a 
baker's daughter. ^^ Lord, we know what we are, but know 
not what we may be. God be at your table ! 

■7 These were the badges of pilgrims. The cockle shell was an emblem 
of their intention to go beyond sea. The habit, being held sacred, was often 
assumed as a disguise in love-adventures. 

8 Larded is garnished. 

9 God yield or reward you. 

10 There was a tradition that the Saviour went into a baker's shop and 
asked for some bread. The baker put some dough in the oven to bake for 
Him, and was rebuked by his daughter for doing so. For this wickedness 
the daughter was transformed into an owl. 



l8o HAMLET, ACT IV. 

King. Conceit upon her father. 

Ophe. Pray you, let's have no words of this ; but when 
they ask you what it means, say you this : — 

[Sings.] To-morrow is Saint Valentine^ s day, 
All in the morning betime, 
And I a maid at your window, 
To be your Valentine}^ 

King. How long hath she been thus ? 

Ophe. I hope all will be well. We must be patient ; but 
I cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him i' the 
cold ground. My brother shall know of it ; and so I thank 
you for your good counsel. — Come, my coach ! — Good 
night, ladies ; good night, sweet ladies ; good night, good 
night. \_Exit. 

King. Follow her close ; give her good watch, I pray 
you. — \_Exit Horatio. 

O, this is the poison of deep grief ; it springs 
All from her father's death. O, Gertrude, Gertrude, 
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, 
But in battaHas.12 First, her father slain : 
Next, your son gone ; and he most violent author 
Of his own just remove : the people mudded. 
Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers, 

11 Of course Valentine stands for a person here ; and it means much the 
same as lover or sweet-heart. The old use of the name is well shown in 
Scott's Fair Alaid of Perth,\vhexe Simon Glover wishes to make a match be- 
tween his daughter Catharine and Henry Smith, the hero of the tale. He 
therefore so arranges matters, that Smith shall be the first person whom 
Catharine sees on the morning of St. Valentine's day. This makes him her 
Valentine for the year : as such, he may claim a kiss of her on the spot, and 
also as often as they meet during the year. 

12 Men go out singly, or one by one, to act as spies ; when they go forth 
Xo fight, they go in armies. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. l8l 

For good Polonius' death ; and we have done but greenly. 

In hugger-mugger ^^ to inter him : poor Ophelia 

Divided from herself and her fair judgment, 

Without the which we're pictures, or mere beasts : 

Last, and as much containing as all these, 

Her brother is in secret come from France ; 

Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds, 

And wants not buzzers to infect his ear 

With pestilent speeches of his father's death ; 

Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd. 

Will nothing stick our person to arraign 

In ear and ear.^^ O my dear Gertrude, this. 

Like to a murdering-piece,i^ in many places 

Gives me superfluous death. \^A noise within. 

Queen. Alack, what noise is this ? 

King. Where are my SwitzersP^^ Let them guard the 

door. — 

Enter a Gentleman. 

What is the matter ? 

Gent. Save yourself, my lord : 

The ocean, overpeering of his hst,i^ 
Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste 

13 This phrase was much used, before and in the Poet's time, for any 
thing done hurriedly and by stealth. Thus Florio explains clandesiinare, 
"to hide or conceal by stealth, or m hugger-mugger." And in North's Plu- 
tarch Antony urges that Cesar's " body should be honourably buried, and 
not in hugger-mugger." 

14 " In ear and ear" is used, apparently, to give a plural sense. 

15 A murdering-piece, or murderer, was a small piece of artillery. Case- 
shot, filled with small bullets, nails, old iron, &c., was often used in these 
murderers. This accounts for the raking fire attributed to them in the text. 

16 Switzers, for royal guards. The Swiss were then, as since, mercenary 
soldiers of any nation that could afford to pay them. 

1'^ Overflowing his bou7tds, or limits. 



1 82 HAMLET, ACT IV. 

Than young Laertes, in a riotous head, 
O'erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord ; 
And — as ^^ the world were now but to begin. 
Antiquity forgot, custom not known. 
The ratifiers and props of every word — 
They cry, Choose we ; Laertes shall be king / 
Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds, 
Laertes shall be king, Laertes king I 

Queen. How cheerfully on the false trail they cry ! — 
O, this is counter,^^ you false Danish dogs ! 

King. The doors are broke. \_Noise within. 

Enter Laertes, armed ; Danes following. 

Laer. Where is this King ? — Sirs, stand you all without. 

Danes. No, let's come in. 

Laer. I pray you, give me leave. 

Danes. We will, we will. \They retire without the door. 

Laer. I thank you : keep the door. — O thou vile King, 
Give me my father ! 

Queen. Calmly, good Laertes. 

Laer. That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bas- 
tard, 
And brands the harlot even here, between 
The chaste unsmirched^^ brows of my true mother. 

King. What is the cause, Laertes, 

18 As has here the force of as if. The explanation sometimes given of 
the passage is, that the rabble are the ratifiers and props of every idle word. 
The plain sense is, that antiquity and custom are the ratifiers and props of 
every sound word touching the matter in hand, the ordering of human 
society, and the State. 

19 Hounds are said to run counter when they are upon a false scent, or 
hunt by the heel, running backward and mistaking the course of the game. 

20 Uhsmirched is unsullied, spotless. 



SCENE II. 



PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 83 



That thy rebeUion looks so giant-hke ? — 

Let him go, Gertrude ; do not fear our person : 

There's such divinity doth hedge a king, 

That treason can but peep to what it would, 

x\cts little of his will. — Tell me, Laertes, 

Why thou art thus incensed. — Let him go, Gertrude. — 

Speak, man. 

Laer. Where is my father ? 

King. Dead. 

Queen. But not by him. 

King. Let him demand his fill. 

Laer. How came he dead ? I'll not be juggled with : 
To Hell, allegiance'! vows, to the blackest devil 1 
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit ! 
I dare damnation : to this point I stand, — 
That both the worlds I give to negligence. 
Let come what comes ; only I'll be revenged 
Most throughly 21 for my father. 

King. Who shall stay you ? 

Laer. My will, not all the world : 
And for my means, I'll husband them so well, 
They shall go far with little. 

King. Good Laertes, 

If you desire to know the certainty 
Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge. 
That, swoopstake,^^ you will draw both friend and foe, 
Winner and loser ? 

21 Throughly and thoroughly, as also ihrozigh and thorotigh, were used in- 
differently in the Poet's time. They are, in fact, only different forms of the 
same word ; as to be thorough in a thing is to go through it. 

22 Swoopstake here means indiscriminately , A sweepstake is one who 
wins or sweeps in all the stakes, whether on the race-grounds or at the gam- 
ing-table. 



184 HAMLET, ACT IV. 

Laer. None but his enemies. 

King. Will you know them, then ? 

Laer. To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms. 
And, like the kind life -rendering pelican, 
Repast them with my blood.^*^ 

King. Why, now you speak 

Like a good child and a true gentleman. 
That I am guiltless of your father's death, 
And am most sensibly in grief for it. 
It shall as level to your judgment pierce ^"^ 
As day does to your eye. 

Danes. [ Within.'] Let her come in. 

Laer. How now ! what noise is that ? — 

Re-enter Ophelia. 

O heat, dry up my brains ! tears seven-times salt. 
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye ! — 
By Heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight, 
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May ! 
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia ! — 
O Heavens ! is't possible, a young maid's wits 
Should be as mortal as an old man's life ? 
Nature is fine in love ; and where 'tis fine 
It sends some precious instance of itself 
After the thing it loves. ^^ 

23 The pelican is a fabulous bird, often referred to by the old poets for 
illustration. An old book entitled A Choice of Emblems and other Devices, 
by Geffrey Whitney, 1586, contains a picture of an eagle on her nest, tearing 
open her breast to feed her young. 

24 Level, again, for direct. — Pierce, here, has the sense of penetrate, that 
is, go through or reach. 

25 Here, as often, instance is proof, example, spechnen, assurance. The 
precious thing which Ophelia's fineness of nature has sent after her father 
is " her fair judgment," that is, her sanity. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. . 1 85 

Ophe. [Sings.] They bore him barefaced on the bier ; 
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny ; 
Aitd on his grave rained many a tear. — 

Fare you well, my dove ! 

Laer. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, 
It could not move me thus. 

Ophe. You must sing, Down a-down, an you call him 
a-down-a. O, how the wheel ^^ becomes it ! It is the false 
steward, that stole his master's daughter.^^ 

Laer. This nothing's more than matter.^s 

Ophe. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance ; pray 
you, love, remember : and there is pansies, that's for 
thoughts. 2i^ 

Laer. A document 2*^ in madness; thoughts and remem- 
brance fitted. 

26 The wheel is the burden of a ballad ; from the Latin rota, a round, 
which is usually accompanied with a burden frequently repeated. 

27 Meaning, probably, some old ballad, of which no traces have come to 
light. 

28 He means that Ophelia's nonsense tells more, as to her condition, 
than speaking sense would. 

29 The language of flowers is very ancient, and the old poets have many 
instances of it. In The Winter's Tale, iv. 3, Perdita makes herself delecta- 
ble in the use of it, distributing her flowers much as Opheha does here. 
Rosemary, being supposed to strengthen the memory, was held emblematic 
of remembrance, and in that thought was distributed at weddings and funer- 
als. — Pansies, from the French pensees, were emblems of pensiveness, 
thought being here again used for grief, the. same as in page 128, note 13. 
The next speech, " thoughts and remembrance fitted," is another instance 
of the same usage. 

30 Docujnent, from the Latin doceo, was often used in the original sense 
of lesson, or something taught. So in The Faerie Queene, i. 10, ig, where 
Fidelia takes the Redcross Knight under her' tuition, and draws upon " her 
sacred booke," — 

And heavenly documents thereout did preach, 
That weaker witt of man could never reach. 



1 86 HAMLET, ACT IV. 

Ophe. There's fennel for you, and columbines : ^^ — there's 
rue for you ; and here's some for me : we may call it herb 
of grace o' Sundays : — O, you must wear your rue with a 
difference.^2 There's a daisy : — I would give you some 
violets,^^ but they wither'd all when my father died : they 
say he made a good end, — 

[Sings.] For bonny sweet Robiii is all my joy ?^ 

Laer. Thought and affliction, passion,^^ Hell itself, 
She turns to favour and to prettiness. 

Ophe. [Sings.] And will he not co7?ie again ? 
And will he not come again ? 

No, no, he is dead, 
■ Go7ie to his death-bed; 
He never will come again. 

His beard was white as snow, 
All flaxen was his poll : 

31 Fennel and columbine were significant of cajolery and ingratitude ; so 
that Ophelia might fitly give them to the guilefiil and faithless King. 

32 Rue was emblematic of sorrow or ruth, and was called herb-grace from 
the moral and medicinal virtues ascribed to it. — There may be some un- 
certainty as to Ophelia's meaning, when she says to the Queen, " you must 
wear your rue with a difference y Bearing a difference is an old heraldic 
phrase ; and the difference here intended is probably best explained in Co- 
gan's Haven of Health : " The second property is that rue abateth carnal 
lust, which is also confirmed by Galen." So that the difference in the 
Queen's case would be emblematic of her " hasty return to the nuptial state, 
and a severe reflection on her indecent marriage," 

33 The daisy was an emblem of dissembling ; the violet, of faithfulness, 
and is so set down in The Lover's Nosegay. 

34 Poor Ophelia in her madness remembers fragments of many old popu- 
lar ballads. Bonny Robiti appears to have been a favourite, for there were 
many others written to that tune. 

35 Thought, again, for grief. — Passion for suffering ; the classical sense. 



SCENE II. 



PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 87 



He is gone, he is gone, 
And we cast away ?noan : 
God ha' mercy on his soul! 
And of 36 all Christian souls, I pray God. — God b' wi' ye. 

\^Exit, 
Laer. Do you see this, O God? 
King. Laertes, I must commune 37 with your grief, 

Or you deny me right. Go but apart ; 

Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will, 

And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me : 

If by direct or by collateral hand 

They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give, 

Our crown, our Hfe, and all that we call ours, 

To you in satisfaction ; but, if not. 

Be you content to lend your patience to us. 

And we shall jointly labour with your soul 

To give it due content. 

Laer. Let this be so : 

His means of death, his obscure burial,— 
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones, 
No noble rite nor formal ostentation,^^ — 
Cry to be heard, as 'twere from Heaven to Earth, 
That 39 I must call't in question. 

Kin'y. So you shall ; 

And where th' offence is let the great axe fall. 
I pray you, go with me. \_Exeunt 

36 Of, again, for on. See page 108, note 38. 

37 Co7nmune has the accent on the first syllable. Generally used so by 
the English poets ; at least I have noted it so in Milton and Wordsworth. 

38 The funerals of knights and persons of rank were made with great 
ceremony and ostentation formerly. Sir John Hawkins observes that " the 
sword, the helmet, the gauntlet, spurs, and tabard are still hung over the 
grave of every knight." 

39 That is continually used by the old poets with the force of so that, or 
insomuch that. 



1 88 HAMLET, ACT IV. 

Scene III. — Another Room in the Castle, 
Enter Horatio and a Servant. 

Nora. What are they that would speak with me ? 

Serv. Sailors, sir : they say they have letters for you. 

Hora. Let them come in. — \_Exit Servant. 

I do not know from what part of the world 
I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet. 

Enter Sailors. 

I Sail. God bless you, sir. 

Hora. Let Him bless thee too. 

I Sail. He shall, sir, an't please Him. There's a letter 
for you, sir, — it comes from the ambassador that was bound 
for England, — if your name be Horatio, as I am let to know 
it is. 

Hora. [Reads.] Horatio, when thou shall have over- 
look' d this, give these fellows some means to the King : they 
have letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a 
pirate of very warlike appointment^ gave us chase. Finding 
ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour ; in 
the grapple I boarded them : on the. instant they got clear of 
our ship ; so I alone became their prisoner. They have 
dealt with me likeJhieves of mercy : but they knew what they 
did; I am to do a good turn for them. Let the King have 
the letters I have sent ; and repair thou to me with as mitch 
speed as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to speak in 
thine ear will make thee dumb ; yet are they much too light for 

1 Appointment, here, is armament, or equipment. Still used thus in mili- 
tary language. Also in " a well-appointed house " ; meaning, of course, 
well-furnished, or well-ordered. 



SCENE IV. 



PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1^9 



the bore^ of the matter. These good fellows will bring thee 
where lam. Rosencrantz and Ginldenstern hold their cotcrse 
for England: of them I have much to tell thee. Farew^ell. 

He that thou knowest thine, Hamlet. 

« 

Come, I will make you way for these your letters ; 

And do't the speedier, that you may direct me 

To him from whom you brought them. \_Exeunt. 

Scene IV. — Another Room in the Castle. 
Enter the King and Laertes. 

King. Now must your conscience my acquittance seal, 
And you must put me in your heart for friend, 
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear, 
That he which hath your noble father slain 
Pursued my hfe. 

Laer. It well appears : but tell me 

Why you proceeded not against these |Seats, 
So crimeful and so capital in nature. 
As by your safety, wisdom, all things else. 
You mainly i were stirr'd up. 

Joiner, O, for two special reasons ; 

Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinew'd. 
But yet to me they're strong. The Queen his mother 
Lives almost by his looks \ and for myself, — 
My virtue or my plague, be't either-which, — 
She's so conjunctive to my life and soul, 

2 The bore is the caliber or capacity of a gun ; as a ten-pounder, or a 

seventy-four pounder. _ ^t- •/ 

1 The Poet sometimes uses mainly for greatly or strongly. So m Troilus 

and Cressida, iv. 4 : " I do not call your faith in question so mainly as my 
merit." 



IQO HAMLET, ACT IV. 

That, as the star moves not but in his sphere, 
I could not but by her. The other motive, 
Why to a pubhc count I might not go. 
Is the great love the general gender ^ bear him ; 
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection. 
Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone. 
Convert his gyves to graces : ^ so that my arrows. 
Too sHghtly timber'd for so loud a wind,'* 
Would have reverted to my bow again. 
And not where I had aim'd them.^ 

Laer. And so have I a noble father lost ; 
A sister driven into desperate terms, 
Whose worth, if praises may go back again,^ 
Stood challenger on mount of all the age ''' 
For her perfections. But my revenge will come. 

King. Break not your sleeps for that : you must not think 
That we are made of stuff so flat and dull. 
That we can let our beard be shook with danger, 
And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more :" 
I loved your father, and we love ourself ; 
And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine — 

Enter a Messenger. 

How now ! what news ? 

2 " The ^^-nexsl gender" is the common race or sort of people ; the multi- 
tude. Shakespeare has the like phrase, " one^^;^^^r of herbs." 

3 Punishment would invest him with more grace in the people's eye ; his 
fetters would make him appear the lovelier to them. 

4 So in Roger Ascham's Toxophilus : " Weake bowes and lyghte shaftes 
cannot stande in a rough wynde." 

5 Elliptical. " And would not have gone where I had aim'd them," is the 
meaning. 

6 The meaning probably is, " If I may praise her for what she was, but 
has now ceased to be." 

7 That is, " stood challenger of all the age." 



SCENE IV. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 1 91. 

■M'ess. Letters, my lord, from Hamlet : 

This to your Majesty ; this to the Queen. 

King. From Hamlet ! who brought them ? 

Mess. Sailors, my lord, they say ; I saw them not : 
They were given me by Claudio ; he received them 
Of him that brought them. 

King. Laertes, you shall hear them. — 

Leave us. \^Exil Messenger. ' 

[Reads.] High and mighty: You shall know I atn set 
naked ^ on your kingdom. To-7norrow shall I beg leave to 
see your kingly eyes ; when I shall, first asking your pardon 
thereunto, recount the occasion of my sudden and more 
strange return. Hamlet. 

What should this mean ? Are all the rest come back ? 
Or is it some abuse,^ and no such thing ? 

Laer. Know yoii the hand ? 

King. 'Tis Hamlet's character. Naked! 

And in a postscript here, he says alone. 
Can you advise me ? 

Laer. I'm lost in it, my lord. But let him come : 
It warms the very sickness in my heart, 
That I shall live and tell him to his teeth. 
Thus diddest thou. 

King. If it be so, Laertes, — 

As how should it be so, how otherwise? 10 — 
Will you be ruled by me ? 

8 Naked, here, means destitute of attendants ; alone. 

9 Abuse for cheat, deception, or delusion. 

10 That is, " how should it be either true or not true ? " The thing seems 
Incredible either way; incredible that Hamlet should have returned; in- 
credible that the letter should not be in Hamlet's character, or hand-writing. 



192 HAMLET, ACT IV. 

Laer. I will, my lord, 

So you will not o'errule me to a peace. 

King. To thine own peace. If he be now return'd, 
As checking ^^ at his voyage, and that he means 
No more to undertake it, I will work him 
To an exploit now ripe in my device, 
Under the which he shall not choose but fall : 
And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe ; 
But even his mother shall uncharge the practice,^^ 
And call it accident. 

Laer. My lord, I will be ruled ; 

The rather, if you could devise it so, 
That I might be the organ. 

King. It falls right. 

You have been talk'd of since your travel much, 
And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality 
Wherein they say you shine : your sum of parts 
Did not together pluck such envy from him 
As did that one ; and that, in my regard, 
Of the unworthiest siege.i^ 

Laer. What part is that, my lord? 

King. A very ^^ riband in the cap of youth, 
Yet needful too ; for youth no less becomes 
The light and careless livery that it wears 

11 To check at is a term in falconry, meaning to start away or fly off from 
the lure. So in Hinde's Bliosto Libidinoso, 1606 : " For who knows not, 
quoth she, that this hawk, which comes now so fair to the fist, may to-mor- 
row check at the lure ? " 

12 Acquit the proceeding or the contrivance of all design. 

13 The Poet again uses siege for seat, that is, place or rank, in Othello, i. 
2 : " I fetch my hfe and being from men of royal siege" The usage was 
not uncommon. 

14 The Poet repeatedly has very in the sense of mere. 



SCENE IV. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 193 

Than settled age his sables and his weeds, 

Importing health and graveness.^^ Two months since, 

Here was a gentleman of Normandy : 

I've seen, myself, and served against, the French, 

And they can ^^ well on horseback : but this gallant 

Had witchcraft in't ; he grew unto his seat ; 

And to such wondrous doing brought his horse, 

A^ he had been incorpsed and demi-natured 

With the brave beast. So far he topp'd my thought, 

That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,i^ 

Come short of what he did. 

Laer. A Norman was't? 

King. A Norman. 

Laer. Upon my life, Lamond. 

King. The very same. 

Laer. I know him well : he is the brooch, ^^ indeed, 
And gem of all the nation. 

King. He made confession of you ; 
And gave you such a masterly report 
For art and exercise in your defence,!^ 
And for your rapier most especially, 

15 The sense of health goes with the preceding clause ; the " light and 
careless livery " denoting health, as the black dress denotes gravity, Shake- 
speare has many instances of like construction. — Weeds was often used for 
clothes or dress in general. Here the sense of settled continues over weeds : 
staid or soder dress. 

16 Can is here used in its original sense of ability or skill. 

1'^ That is, in the imagination of shapes and tricks, ox feats. This use of 
forge ?ind/orge}y was not unfrequent. — To top is to surpass. 

18 Brooch was used for any conspicuous ornament in general. So in 
The World runnes on Wheeles, 1630 : " These sonnes of Mars, who in their 
times were the glorious Brooches of our nation, and admirable terrour to 
our enemies." 

19 Defence here m^zxis fencing or sword-practice. 



194 HAMLET, Ar*- iv. 

That he cried out, 'twould be a sight indeed, 

If one could match you : the scrimers ^^ of their nation, 

He swore, had neither motion, guard, nor eye, 

If you opposed them. Sir, this report of his 

Did Hamlet so envenom with your envy,^^ 

That he could nothing do but wish and beg 

Your sudden coming o'er, to play with him. 

Now, out of this, — 

Laer. What out of this, my lord ? 

King. Laertes, was your father dear to you ? 
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, 
A face without a heart ? 

Laer. Why ask you this ? 

King. Not that I think you did not love your father ; 
But that I know love is begun by time,^^ 
And that I see, in passages of proof,^*^ 
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it. 
There lives within the very flame of love 
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it ; 
And nothing is at a like goodness still ; 
For goodness, growing to a plurisy,-^ 
Dies in his own too-much. That we would do, 
We should do when we would ; for this would changes. 
And hath abatements and delays as many 

20 Scrimer is from the French escrlmeur, which means fencer. 

21 " With envy of yoti." The objective genitive, as it is called. Shake- 
speare often has both the objective and the subjective genitive in cases 
where present usage does not admit them. 

22 As love is begun by time, and has its gradual increase, so time quali- 
fies and abates it. 

23 Passages of proof xaeaxis i7tsta?tces of trial, or experience. 

24 Plurisy is from the Latin plus, pluris, and must not be confounded 
\^\\h pleurisy. It means excess, much the same as Burns's " unco guid." So 
in Massinger's Unnatural Combat : " Plurisy of goodness is thy ill." 



SCENE IV. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 195 

As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents ; 
And then this should is hke a spendthrift sigh, 
That hurts by easing.^^ But, to th' quick o' the ulcer : 
Hamlet comes back : what would you undertake, 
To show yourself your father's son in deed 
More than in words ? 

Laer. To cut his throat 1' the church. 

King. No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize ;2^ 
Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes, 
Will you do this,^'' keep close within your chamber. 
Hamlet return'd shali know you are come home : 
We'll put on^s those shall praise your excellence, 
And set a double varnish on the fame 
The Frenchman gave you ; bring you, in fine, together. 
And wager on your heads. He, being remiss, 
Most generous, and free from all contriving. 
Will not peruse ^9 the foils ; str thai, with ease 
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose 
A sword unbated,^^ and in a pa^b of practice 
Requite him for your father. 

25 It was anciently believed that sighing consumed the blood. The Poet 
has several allusions to this, as in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, iii. 2: 
" Sighs of love that cost the fresh blood dear." There is also a fine moral 
meaning in the figure. Jeremy Taylor speaks of certain people who take 
to a sentimental penitence, as " cozening themselves with their own tears," 
as if these would absolve them from " doing works meet for repentance." 
Such tears may be fitly said to " hurt by easing." 

26 Murder should not have the protection or privilege of sanctuary in 
any place. The allusion is to the rights of sanctuary with which certain re- 
ligious places were formerly invested, so that criminals resorting to them 
were shielded not only from private revenge, but from the arm of the law. 

27 That is, " i/you will do this " ; or, " If you would do this." 

28 Put on, here, is stir up, incite, or, as we say, set on. 

29 Peruse, for observe closely or scrutinize. 

80 Unbated is unblunted : a foil without the cap, or button, which was 



196 HAMLET, ACT IV. 

Laer. I will do't ; 

And, for that purpose, I'll annoint my sword. 
I bought an unction of a mountebank,^! 
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it. 
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, 
Collected from all simples ^^ that have virtue 
Under the Moon, can save the thing from death 
That is but scratch'd withal : I'll touch my point 
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly, 
It may be death. 

King. Let's further think of this ; 

Weigh what convenience both of time and means 
May fit us to our shape. If this should fail. 
And that our drift look through our bad performance,^^ 
'Twere better not assay 'd : therefore this project 
Should have a back or second, that might hold, 
If this should blast in proof ^^ Soft ! — let me see : — 
We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings, — 
I ha't : 
When in your motion you are hot and dry, — 

put upon the point, when fencers were to play or practise their art. — A pass 
of practice is a thrust made as in exercise of skill, and without any purpose 
of harm ; the thruster pretending to be ignorant of the button's being off 
the foil. 

SI Mountebank commonly meant a quack, but is here put, apparently, for 
druggist or apothecary. The word seems to have been used originally of a 
pedlar or pretender who mounted a bench, or a bank by the wayside, and 
hawked off his wares or his skill. — Here, as generally in Shakespeare, mor- 
tal \s, deadly ; that which kills. 

32 Cataplasm is a soft plaster, or a poultice. — Simples is, properly, herbs ; 
but was used of any medicine. See page 144, note 39, 

33 " If our purpose should expose or betray itself through lack of skill in 
the execution." 

34 Should break down in the trial. The image is of proving guns, which 
of course sometimes burst in the testing. 



SCENE IV. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 197 

As make your bouts more violent to that end, — 
And that he calls for drmk, I'll have prepar'd him 
A chalice for the nonce ; ^^ whereon but sipping, 
If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck,^^ 
Our purpose may hold there. — 

Enter the Queen. 

How now, sweet Queen ! 

Queen. One woe doth tread upon another's heel. 
So fast they follow. — Your sister's drown'd, Laertes. 

Laer. Drown'd! O, where P^? 

Queen, There is a willow grows aslant a brook. 
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream : 
There with fantastic garlands did she come 
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples. 
That HberaPS shepherds give a grosser name, 
But our cold maids do dead-men's fingers call them : 
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds 
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke ; 
When down her weedy trophies and herself 
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide. 
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up ; 

35 " por the nonce " is for the occasion ; literally, for the once. — In the 
line before, instead of "And f/zai," we should say "And when'' See page 
55, note I. 

36 Stuck, a fencing-term, is thrust; the same as the Italian and Spanish 
stoccata and sfaccado. So in Twelfth Night, iii. 4 : " He gives me the stuck- 
in with such mortal motion, that it is inevitable." 

3'^ That Laertes might be excused in some degree for not cooling, the 
Act concludes with the affecting death of Ophelia ; who in the beginning 
lay like a little projection of land into a lake or stream, covered with spray- 
flowers, quietly reflected in the quiet waters ; but at length is undermined 
or loosened, and becomes a fairy isle, and after a brief vagrancy sinks 
almost without an eddy. — Coleridge. 

88 Liberal is repeatedly used by Shakespeare for loose-tongued. 



198 HAMLET, 



ACT IV. 



Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, 
As one incapable ^^ of her own distress, 
Or like a creature native and indued 
Unto that element : but long it could not be 
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, 
PuU'd the poor wretch ^^ from her melodious lay- 
To muddy death. 

Laer. Alas, then is she drown 'd ! 

Queen. Drown'd, drown'd. 

Laer. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, 
And therefore I forbid my tears : but yet 
It is our trick ; nature her custom holds, 
Let shame say what it will : when these are gone, 
The woman will be out."*! — Adieu, my lord ; 
I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze. 
But that this folly drowns it. \_Exit. 

King. Let's follow, Gertrude : 

How much I had to do to calm his rage ! 
Now fear I this will give it start again ; 
Therefore let's follow. {Exeunt 

39 Incapable for insensible or unconscious. The Poet has it so in one or 
two other places. So in As You Like It, iii. 5, we have capable in the oppo- 
site sense : " Lean but upon a rush, the cicatrice and capable impressure thy 
palm some moment keeps." 

40 Wretch, again, as a strong term of endearment. See page 103, note 24. 

41 " I shall have wept the woman's tenderness all out of me, and shall be 
again ready for a man's work." 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 199 



ACT V. 

Scene I. — A Churchyard. 
Enter two Clowns, with spades, ^c. 

1 Clown. Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wil- 
fully seeks her own salvation ? 

2 Clown. I tell thee she is ; and therefore make her grave 
straight : ^ the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian 
burial. 

1 Clown. How can that be, unless she drown'd herself in 
her own defence ? 

2 Clown. Why, 'tis found so. 

1 Clown. It must be se offendendo ;^ it cannot be else. 
For here lies the point : If I drown myself wittingly, it argues 
an act j and an act hath three branches ; it is, to act, to do, 
and to perform : argal ^ she drown'd herself wittingly. 

2 Clown. Nay, but hear you, goodman delver, — 

1 Clown. Give me leave. Here hes the water ; good : 
here stands the man ; good : if the man go to this water, 
and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he,^ he goes, — mark 
you that ; but if the water come to him and drown him, he 
drowns not himself: argal he that is not guilty of his own 
death shortens not his own life. 

2 Clown. But is this law? 

1 straight iox straightway ; a common usage. 

2 The Clown, in undertaking to show off his legal learning, blunders 
offendendo for de/ende?tdo. 

3 Argal is an old vulgar corruption of the Latin e7go, therefore. 
•* " Will he, nill he," is will he, or will he not. 



200 HAMLET, ACT V. 

1 Clown. Ay, marry, is't ; crowner's-quest law.^ 

2 Clown. Will you ha' the truth on't? If this had not 
been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o' 
Christian burial. 

1 Clown. Why, there thou say'st ; and the more pity that 
great folk should have countenance in this world to drown 
or hang themselves, more than their even-Christian.^ — Come, 
my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, 
ditchers, and grave-makers ; they hold up Adam's profession. 

2 Clown. Was he a gentleman ? 

1 Clown. He was the first that ever bore arms. 

2 Clown. Why, he had none. 

1 Clown. What, art a heathen? How dost thou under- 
stand the Scripture ? The Scripture says Adam digg'd : 
could he dig without arms? I'll put another question to 
thee : if thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thy- 
self — 

2 Clown. Go to. 

I Clown. What is he that builds stronger than either the 
mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter ? 

5 Sir John Hawkins thinks the Poet here meant to ridicule a case re- 
ported by Plowden. Sir James Hales had drowned himself in a fit of in- 
sanity, and the legal question was whether his lease was thereby forfeited to 
the Crown, Much subtilty was expended in finding out whether Sir James 
was the agent or the patie7it ; that is, whether he went to the water or the 
water came to him. The following is part of the argument : " Sir James 
Hales was dead, and how came he to his death ? It may be answered, by 
drowning ; and who drowned him ? Sir James Hales ; and when did he 
drown him ? In his lifetime. So that Sir Jamec Hales being alive caused 
Sir James Hales to die, and the act of the living man was the death of the 
dead man." 

^ Even- Christian iox fellow- Christian was the old mode of expression, 
and is to be found in Chaucer and the Chroniclers. Wiclifft. has even-se^ 
vant {qx fellow-servant. 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 201 

2 Clown. The gallows -maker ; for that frame outlives a 
thousand tenants. 

/ Clown. I like thy wit well, in good faith : the gallows 
does well : but how does it well? it does well to those that 
do ill : now, thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger 
than the church : argal the gallows may do well to thee. 
To't again \ come. 

2 Clown. Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, 

or a carpenter ? 

1 Clown, Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.'^ 

2 Clown, Marry, now I can tell. 

1 Clown. To't. 

2 Clown. Mass, I cannot tell. 

E7iter Hamlet and Horatio, at a distance. 

I Clown. Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your 
dull ass will not mend his pace with beating ; and when you 
are asked this question next, say a grave-maker : the houses 
that he makes last till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan ] 
fetch me a stoup of liquor. {Exit 2 Clown. 

[He digs, and sings.] 
In youth, when I did love, did love, 

Methought it was very sweet, 
To contract— O — the time, for— ah — my behove — 

O— Methought there was nothing meet? 

7 This was a common phrase for giving over or ceasing to do a thing, a 
metaphor derived from the unyoking of oxen at the end of their labour. 

8 The original ballad from whence these stanzas are taken is prmted m 
Tottel's Miscellany, or Songes and Sonnettes by Lord Surrey and others, 1575. 
The ballad is attributed to Lord Vaux. and is printed by Dr. Percy m his 
Reliques of Ancient Poetry. The Gs and ahs are meant to express the 
Clown's gruntings as he digs. 



202 HAMLET, ACT V. 

Ham, Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he 
sings at grave -making ? 

Hora. Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness. 

Ham. 'Tis e'en so : the hand of little employment hath 
the daintier sense. 

I Clown. [Sings.] But age, with his stealing steps. 

Hath claw''d me in his clutch, 
And hath shipped me intil the land, 
As if I had never beeii such. 

[Throws up a skull. 

Ha7n. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once : 
how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jaw- 
bone, that did the first murder ! It might be the pate of a 
politician, which this ass now o'erreaches ; one that would cir- 
cumvent God, might it not?^ 

Hora. It might, my lord. 

Ham. Or of a courtier ; which could say Good morrow, 
sweet lord / How dost thou, good lord ? This might be my 
lord such-a-one, that praised my lord such-a-one's horse, 
when he meant to beg it, might it not ? ^ 

Hora. Ay, my lord. 

Ham. Why, e'en so ; and now my Lady Worm's ; ^^ chap- 
less, and knock'd about the mazzard with a sexton's spade : 
here's fine revolution, an we had the trick to see't. Did 
these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at log- 
gats 11 with 'em? mine ache to think on't. 

9 Shakespeare uses politician for a plotter or schemer; one who is ever 
trying to out-craft and overreach his neighbour, and even Providence, and 
to intrigue his w^ay to popularity or profit. The equivoque in o'erreaches is 
obvious enough. 

10 The skull that was my Lord Such-a-one s is now ony Lady Worm's. 

II Loggats are small logs or pieces of wood. Hence loggats was the 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 203 

I Clown. [Sings.] 

A picJz-axe, and a spade, a spade, 

For and^"^ a shrouding sheet ; — O — ■ 
A pit of clay for to be made 
For such a guest is meet. 

[Throws up another skull. 

Ham. There's another : why may not that be the skull of 
a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets/^ his 
cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this 
rude knave now to knock him about the sconce i'* with a 
dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery ? 
Hum ! This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, 
with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double 
vouchers, his recoveries : ^^ is this the fine of his fines, and 
the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of 

name of an ancient rustic game, wherein a stake was fixed in the ground at 
which loggats were thrown ; in short, a ruder kind of quoit-play. 

12 " For and" says Dyce, " in the present version of the stanza, answers to 
And eke in that given by Percy." So in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight 
of the Burning Pestle : " Your squire doth come, and with him comes the 
lady, /or and the Squire of Damsels, as I take it." 

13 Quiddits are quirks, or subtle questions ; and quillets are nice and friv- 
olous distinctions. The etymology of this last word has plagued many 
learned heads. Blount, in his Glossography, clearly points out quodlibet as 
the origin of it. Bishop Wilkins calls a quillet " a frivolousness." 

14 Sconce was not unfrequently used for head. 

15 Shakespeare here is profuse of his legal learning. Ritson, a lawyer, 
shall interpret for him : " A recovery with double voticher is so called from 
two persons being successively vozicher, or called upon to warrant the tenant's 
title. 'Qoih. fines and recoveries are fictions of law, used to convert an estate 
tail into a fee-simple. Statutes are (not acts of parliament but) statutes mer- 
chant and staple, particular modes of recognizance or acknowledgment for 
securing debts, which thereby become a charge upon the party's land. 
Statutes and recognizances are constantly mentioned together in the conve- 
nants of a purchase deed." 



204 HAMLET, ACT V. 

fine dirt? 16 will his vouchers vouch him no more of his pur- 
chases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of 
a pair of indentures P^^ The very conveyances of his lands 
will hardly lie in this box ; and must the inheritor himself 
have no more, ha? 

Hora. Not a jot more, my lord. 

Ham. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins? 

Hora. Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too. 

Ham. They are sheep and calves which seek out assur- 
ance in that.i^ I will speak to this fellow. — Whose grave's 
this, sirrah? 

I Clown. Mine, sir. — 

[Sings.] O — A pit of clay for to be made 
For such a guest is meet. 

Ham. I think it be thine indeed, for thou Hest in't. 

I Clown. You lie out on't, sir, and therefore it is not 
yours : for my part, I do not lie in't and yet it is mine. 

Ham. Thou dost lie in't, to be in't and say it is thine : 
'tis for the dead, not for the quick ; therefore thou liest. 

I Clown. 'Tis a quick he, sir ; 'twill away again, from me 
to you. 

16 Here we have fine used in four different senses : first, in the proper 
Latin sense, end; second, in the legal sense, to denote certain processes in 
law; third, in the sense of proud, elegant, or refined; fourth, in the ordinary 
sense of small. 

1'^ Indenture, conveyance, and assurance axe all used here as equivalent 
terms, and mean what we call deeds ; instruments relating to the tenure and 
transfer of property. They were called indentures, because two copies were 
written on the same sheet of parchment, which was cut in two in a toothed 
or indented line, to guard against counterfeits, and to prove genuineness in 
case of controversy. — Inheritor, in the next line, is possessor or owner. The 
Poet often uses the verb to biherlt in the same sense. 

18 A quibble is here implied upon parchment ; deeds, which were always 
written on parchment, being in legal language " common assurances." 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 205 

Ham. What man dost thou dig it for? 

I Clown. For no man, sir. 

Ham. What woman, then ? 

I Clown. For none, neither. 

Ham. Who is to be buried in't ? 

I Clown. One that was a woman, sir ; but, rest her soul ! 
she's dead. 

Ham. How absolute the knave is ! we must speak by the 
card,^^ or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, 
these three years I have taken a note of it ; the age is grown 
so picked,^^ that the toe of the peasant comes so near the 
heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.^i — How long hast 
thou been a grave-maker ? 

I Clown. Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day 
that our last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras. 

Ham. How long is that since ? 

I Clown. Cannot you tell that ? every fool can tell that : 
it was the very day that young Hamlet was born ; he that is 
mad, and sent into England. 

Ham. Ay, marry; why was he sent into England? 

I Clown. Why, because he was mad : he shall recover 
his wits there ; or, if he do not, it's no great matter there. 

Ham. Why ? 

I Clown. 'Twill not be seen in him there ; there the men 
are as mad as he. 

Ham. How came he mad? 

I Clown. Very strangely, they say. 

19 To speak by the card, is to speak precisely, by rule, or according to a 
prescribed course. It is a metaphor from the seaman's card or chart by 
which he guides his course. 

20 Picked is curious, over-nice. 

21 Kibe is an old word for chilblain. The Poet has it several times. 



206 HAMLET, ACT V. 

Ham. How strangely ? 

I Clown. Faith, e'en with losing his wits. 

Ham. Upon what ground ? 

I Clown. Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton 
here, man and boy, thirty years. 

Ham. How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot? 

I Clown. V faith, if he be not rotten before he die, — as 
we have many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce 
hold the laying in, — he will last you some eight year or nine 
year : a tanner will last you nine year. 

Ham. Why he more than another? 

I Clown. Why, sir, his hide is so tann'd with his trade, 
that he will keep out water a great while : and your water is 
a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. Here's a skull 
now ; this skull has lain in the earth three-and-twenty years. 

Ham. Whose was it? 

I Clown. A whoreson mad fellow's it was : whose do you 
think it was ? 

Ha?n. Nay, I know not. 

I Clown. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue ! 'a pour'd 
a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, 
was Yorick's skull, the King's jester. 

Ham. This ? 

I Clown. E'en that. 

Ham. Let me see. \_Takes'lhe skull.~\ — Alas, poor Yor- 
ick ! — I knew him, Horatio ; a fellow of infinite jest, of 
most excellent fancy : he hath borne me on his back a 
thousand times ; and now how abhorred in my imagination it 
is ! my gorge rises at it. Here hung .those lips that I have 
kissed I know not how oft. — Where be your gibes now ? 
your gambols ? your songs ? your flashes of merriment, that 
were wont to set the table on a roar ? Not one now, to mock 



SCENE L PRINCE OF DENMARK. 207 

your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?. Now get you to my 
lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to 
this favour she must come : make her laugh at that ! — Pr'y- 
thee, Horatio, tell me one thing. 

Hora. What's that, my lord ? 

Ham. Dost thou think Alexander look'd o' this fashion 
i' the earth? 

Hora. E'en so. 

Ham. And smelt so ? pah ! . \_Puts down the skull. 

Hora. E'en so, my lord. 

Ham. To what base uses we may return, Horatio ! Why 
may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till 
he find it stopping a bung-hole ? 

Hora. 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so. 

Ha77i. No, faith, not a jot ; but to follow him thither with 
modesty enough, and likehhood to lead it ; as thus : Alex- 
ander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into 
dust ; the dust is earth ; of earth we make loam : and why 
of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop 
a beer-barrel ? 

Imperial Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay. 
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away : 
O, that that earth which kept the world in awe 
Should patch a wall t' expel the Winter's flaw I^^ 
But soft ! but soft ! aside ! here comes the King, 
The Queen, the courtiers : — 

Enter Priests, ^'c, in pi-ocession ; the Corpse of Ophelia, 
Laertes aiid Mourners following ; the King, the Queen, 
their Trains, &^c. 

Who is that they follow ? 

22 p^jlaw is a violent gust or blast of wind. 



208 HAMLET, ACT V. 

And with such maimed rites ? This doth betoken, 

The corse they follow did with desperate hand 

Fordo its own life : 'twas of some estate.^^ 

Couch we awhile, and mark. \_Retiring with Horatio. 

Laer. What ceremony else ? 

Ham. That is Laertes, a very noble youth : mark. 

Laer. What ceremony else ? 

I Priest. Her obsequies have been as far enlarged 
As we have warrantise : her death was doubtful ; 
And, but that great command o'ersways the order, 
She should in ground unsanctified have lodged 
Till the last trumpet ; for charitable prayers, 
^Shards,^^ flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her : 
Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants,^^ 
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home 
Of 26 bell and burial. 

Laer. Must there no more be done ? 

I Priest. No more be done : 

We should profane the service of the dead. 
To sing a requiem and such rest to her 
As to peace-parted souls.^"^ 

23 Estate was a common term for persons of rank. — To fordo is to undo 
or destroy. See page 95, note 21. 

24 Shards not only means fragments of pots and tiles, but rubbish of any 
kind. Our version of the Bible has preserved to us pot-sherds ; and brick- 
layers, in Surrey and Sussex, use the compounds tile-sherds, slate-sherds. 
— For, in the preceding line, has the force of instead of. 

25 Grants is an old word iox garlands ; very rare, and not used again by 
Shakespeare. It was customary in some parts of England to have a gar- 
land of flowers and sweet herbs carried before a maiden's coffin. Johnson 
says it was the custom in rural parishes in his time. 

26 O/has here the force oi with. 

27 A requiem is a mass sung for the rest of the soul. So called from the 
words, Requiem ceternam dona eis, Domine. — " Peace-parted souls" is souls 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 209 

Lae?'. Lay her i' the earth ; 

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
May violets spring ! — I tell thee, churlish priest, 
A ministering angel shall my sister be, 
When thou liest howling. 

Ham. What, the fair Ophelia ! 

Queen. Sweets to the sweet : farewell ! \_Scattering flowers . 
I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife ; 
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, 
And not have strew'd thy grave. 

Laer. O, treble woe 

Fall ten times treble on that cursed head 
Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious '^'^ sense 
Deprived thee of ! — Hold off the earth awhile, 
Till I have caught her once more in mine arms. 

\_Leaps into the grave. 
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, 
Till of this flat a mountain you have made 
T' o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head 
Of blue Olympus. 

Ham. \^Advancing^ What is he whose grief 
Bears such an emphasis ? whose phrase of sorrow 
Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand 
Like wonder- wounded hearers ? This is I, 
Hamlet the Dane ! \_Leaps into the grave. 

Laer. The Devil take thy soul ! 

{^Grappling with him. 

that have departed in peace / or, as the Prayer-book has it, " in favour with 
Thee our God, and in perfect charity with the world." 

28 Ingenious for ingenuous, guileless. Even Defoe has it so in his Colonel 
yack, 1738 : " But 'tis contrary to an ingenious spirit to delight in such ser- 
vice." 



2IO HAMLET, ACT V. 

Ham. Thou pray'st not well. 
I pr'ythee, take thy fingers from my throat ; 
For, though I am not splenitive and rash, 
Yet have I something in me dangerous, 
Which let thy wisdom fear : hold off thy hand ! 

King. Pluck them asunder. 

Quten. Hamlet, Hamlet ! 

All. Gentlemen, — 

Hora. Good my lord, be quiet. 

\The Attendsints J^ar I l/iem, and they come out of the grave. 

Ham. Why, I will fight with him upon this theme 
Until my eyelids will no longer wag. 

Queen. O my son, what theme ? 

Hain. I loved Ophelia : forty thousand brothers 
Could not, with all their quantity of love. 
Make up my sum. — What wilt thou do for her ? 

King. O, he is mad, Laertes. 

Queen. For love of God, forbear him. 

Ham. 'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do : 
Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself ? 
Woo't drink up Esill ? ^^ eat a crocodile ? 
I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine ? 
To outface me with leaping in her grave ? 



29 What particular lake, river, frith, or gulf was meant by the Poet, is 
something uncertain. The more common opinion is, that he had in mind 
the river Yesel, which, of the larger branches of the Rhine, is the one nearest 
to Denmark. ' In the maps of our time, Isef is the name of a gulf almost 
surrounded by land, in the Island of Zealand, not many miles- west of Elsi-' 
nore. Either of these names might naturally enough have been spelt and 
pronounced Esitl or hell by an Englishman in Shakespeare's time. In 
strains of h)^erbole, such figures of speech were often used by the old poets. 
— Woo' I is a contraction of wouldst thou, said to be common in the northern 
counties of England. 



SCENE I. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 211 

Be buried quick with her, and so will I ; 
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw 
Millions of acres on us, till our ground, 
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,^^ 
Make Ossa like a wart ! Nay, an thou'lt mouth, 
I'll rant as well as thou. 

Queen. This is mere^i madness : 

And thus awhile the fit will work on him ; 
Anon, as patient as the female dove. 
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,^^ 
His silence will sit drooping. 

Ham. Hear you, sir : 

What is the reason that you use me thus? 
I loved you ever : but it is no matter ; 
Let Hercules himself do what he may, 
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. \_Exit. 

King. I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him. — 

\_Exit Horatio. 
\_To Laertes.] Strengthen your patience in our last night's 

speech ; 
We'll put the matter to the present push. — 
Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son. — 
This grave shall have a Hving monument : 
An hour of quiet shortly shall we see ; 
Till then, in patience our proceeding be. \_Exeunt, 

30 " The burning zone " is no doubt the path, or seeming path, of the Sun 
in the celestial sphere ; the Sun's diurnal orbit, 

31 Here, as often, mere is absolute or downright. 

32 The "golden couplets" are the two chicks of the dove; which, when 
first hatched, are covered with a yellow down ; and in her patient tenderness 
the mother rarely leaves the nest, till her little ones attain to some degree of 
dove-discretion. — Disclose was often used for hatch. 



212 HAMLET, ACT v. 

Scene II. ^- A Hall in the Castle. 
Enter Hamlet and Horatio. 

Ham. So much for this, sir ; now shall you see the other : 
You do remember all the circumstance ? ^ 

Hora. Remember it, my lord ! 

Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, 
That would not let me sleep : ^ methought I lay 
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes.^ Rashly, — 
And praised be rashness for it ; let us know, 
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well. 
When our deep plots do pall ; "* and that should teach us 
There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we will, — 

1 Circumstance probably means the circuvistayitial account given by Ham- 
let in his letter to Horatio. — The other xeiers, no doubt, to the further matter 
intimated in that letter : " I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee 
dumb." 

2 Hamlet has from the first divined the King's purpose in sending him to 
England. Since the close of the interlude, when the King was " frighted 
with false fire," Hamlet knows that the King did indeed murder his father, 
and he also knows that the King suspects him of knowing it. Hence, on ship- 
board, he naturally has a vague, general apprehension of mischief, and this 
as naturally fills him with nervous curiosity as to the particular shape of 
danger which he is to encounter. 

3 The bilboes were bars of iron with fetters annexed to them, by which 
mutinous or disorderly sailors were linked together. The word is derived 
from Bilboa, in Spain, where the things were made. To understand the 
allusion, it should be known that, as these fetters connected the legs of the 
offenders very closely together, their attempts to rest must be as fruitless as 
those of Hamlet, in whose mind thei-e was a kind of fighting that would not 
let him sleep. — Mutines is for mutineers. 

4 Pall is from the old French palser, to fade or fall away. So in Antony 
and Cleopatra: " Fll never follow thy pall' d fortunes more." — Note that 
all after rashly, down to the beginning of Hamlet's next speech, is paren- 
thetical. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 213 

Hora, That is most certain. 

Ham. — Up from my cabin, 
My sea-gown scarf d about me,^ in the dark 
Groped I to find out them ; had my desire ; 
Finger'd their packet ; and, in fine, withdrew 
To mine own room again : making so bold. 
My fears forgetting manners, to unseal 
Their grand commission ; where I found, Horatio, — 
O royal knavery ! — an exact command. 
Larded with many several sorts of reasons, — 
Importing Denmark's health, and England's too, 
With, ho ! such bugs and goblins in my life,^ — 
That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,'^ 
No, not to stay the grinding of the axe, 
My head should be struck off. 

Hora. Is't possible ? 

Ham. Here's the commission : read it at more leisure. 
But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed ? 

Hora. I beseech you. 

Ham. Being thus be-netted round with villainies, — 
Ere I could make a prologue to my brains. 
They had begun the play,^ — I sat me down, 

5 Thrown, or gat/ietvd, loosely about me. 

6 Such bugbears and fantastic dangets growing out of my life. The Poet 
has bug several times in that sense. So in The Winter's Tale, iii. 2 : " Sir, 
spare your threats : the bug, which you would fright me with, I seek." — 
Goblins were a knavish sort of fairies, perhaps ignes fatui, and so belonged 
to the genus Humbug. 

7 The language is obscure, though the general sense is plain enough. I 
suspect bated is an instance of the passive form with the active sense ; no 
leisure a^a/««^ the speed ; or the haste not being lessened by any pause.— 
Supervise is looking over, perusal. 

8 An allusion to the stage, where a play was commonly introduced by a 
prologue. Hamlet means that his thoughts were so fiery-footed as to start 



214 HAMLET, ACT V. 

Devised a new commission ; wrote it fair : 

I once did hold it, as our statists do, 

A baseness to write fair,^ and labour'd much 

How to forget that learning ; but, sir, now 

It did me yeoman's service.'^ Wilt thou know 

Th' effect of what I wrote ? 

Hora. Ay, good my lord. 

Ham. An earnest conjuration from the King, — 
As England was his faithful tributary j 
As love between them like the palm might flourish ; 
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear, 
And stand a cement 'tween their amities ; 
And many such-like ases of great charge,^^ — 
That, on the view and knowing of these contents, 
Without debatement further, more or less. 
He should the bearers put to sudden death, 
Not shriving-time ^^ allow'd. 

Hora. How was this seal'd ? 

Ham. Why, even in that was Heaven ordinant. 
I had my father's signet in my purse, 

off in. the play itself before he could get through with the introduction 

to it. 

9 Statist is the old word for statesman. Blackstone says that " most of 
our great rnen of Shakespeare's time wrote very bad hands ; their secreta- 
ries, very neat ones." It was accounted a mechanical and vulgar accom- 
plishment to write a fair hand. 

1" In the days of archery, the English yeomanry, with their huge bows 
and long arrows, were the most terrible fighters in Europe. 

11 Of course " ases " refers to the use of As three times in the preceding 
lines. In Shakespeare's time as and that were often used interchangeably. 
So here; and, according to present usage, the second As and also the third 
should be That. — Great charge is great importance ; charged with great im' 
fort. 

12 " Shriving-'iwiMi " is time for confession and absolution. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK, 215 

Which was the model of that Danish seal ; 
Folded the writ up in form of th' other' ; 
Subscribed it ; gave't th' impression ; placed it safely, 
The changeling never known. Now, the next day 
Was our sea-fight ; and what to this was sequent 
Thou know'st already. 

Hora. So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to't. 

Ham. Why, man, they did make love to this employment ; 
They are not near my conscience ; their defeat 
Does by their own insinuation grow : ^'^ 
'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes 
Between the pass and fell-incensed points 
Of mighty opposites.'"* 

i3 Horatio seems to regret, as he well may, the fate of Guildenstern and 
Rosencrantz, who, of course, did not distinctly know the purpose of their 
commission, else they would have turned back, after the separation of 
Hamlet from them. Of course, too, Hamlet expected, at the time, to go to 
England with them ; and it has been suggested that, had he done so, he 
would have arrested the effect of the substituted commission. But I prefer 
the view taken by Professor Werder : "As surely as Rosencrantz and Guild- 
enstern deliver their letter, his head falls. That letter, then, they must not 
be alloioed to deliver ; they must deliver a different one. But do you say he 
could have spared them ? he could have written something that would en- 
danger neither him nor them ? Does he know, or can he discover from 
them so that he rnay depend upon their word, how far they are cognizant 
of the purport of their errand ? whether they are not charged with some 
oral message ? What if they should contradict what he might write of a 
harmless character ? What if the King of England, being in doubt, should 
send back to Denmark for further directions, detain all three, and then, as 
surely was to be expected, put Hamlet to death ? No, there is no expe- 
dient possible, no evasion, no choice between thus or otherwise. He must 
sacrifice them, a/^ii even without allowing them time to confess, — must do 
this even. For, if only they are allowed time for confession, after they are 
seized and made sensible of their position, there is no foreseeing what turn 
things may take for him." 

14 When men of lower rank come between the thrusts and sword-points 
of great men engaged in fierce and mortal duel, or bent on fighting it out to 



2l6 HAMLET, ACT V. 

Hora. Why, what a king is this ! 

Ham. Does it not, think'st thou, stand me now upon?*^ 
He that hath kill'd my King, and stain'd my mother ; 
Popp'd in between th' election and my hopes ; 
Thrown out his angle for my proper life, 
And with such cozenage, — is't not perfect conscience 
To quit ^^ him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd, 
To let this canker of our nature come 
In further evil ? '^ 

Hora. It must be shortly known to him from England 
What is the issue of the business there. 

the death. — Here, as usual in Shakespeare, opposites is opponents, — I 
quote again from Professor Werder : " Whoever, from his position, or from 
his zeal and ofticiousness, undertakes the office of carrying the letter and 
Hamlet to England, must suffer whatever of harm to himself may be con- 
nected with such an errand. The business is dangerous ; such affairs 
always are. The baseness of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is their ruin : 
they promenade, so to speak, in the sphere of a fate which involves damna- 
tion, without scenting or wishing to scent the sulphur. Where such a king 
bears rule, his servants are always exposed to the very worst that can befall ; 
and at any moment their ruin may come through circumstances and causes, 
from which nothing may seem more remote than the catastrophe : for the 
main thing is overlooked, because it is always present, even the ground on 
which all concerned live and move, upon which all rests, and which is itself 
Destruction. Whoever serves such a king, and, without any misgiving of 
his crime, serves him with ready zeal ; upon him Hell has a claim ; and, if 
that claim be made good, he has no right to complain. — These are things 
in which Shakespeare knows no jesting, because he is so great an ex- 
pounder of the Law, the Divine Law ; and he holds to it as no second poet 
has done." 

15 " It stands me upon" is an old phrase for "it is incumbent upon me," 
or, " it is my bounden duty." Shakespeare has it repeatedly. So in Kmg 
Richard II., ii. 3 : "It stands your Grace upon, to do him right." 

16 Here, as in many other places, to quit is to requite. 

1'^ " Is it not a damnable sin to let this cancer oi humanity proceed further 
in mischief and villainy ? " Canker, in one of its senses, means an eating, 
malignant sore, like ^ cancer; which word is from the same original. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 217 

Ham. It will be short : the interim is mine ; 1^ 
And a man's life's no more than to say One. 
But I am very sorry, good Horatio, 
That to Laertes I forgot myself; 
For by the image of my cause I see 
The portraiture of his.^^ I'll court his favours ; 20 
But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me 
Into a towering passion. 

Hora. Peace ! who comes here ? 

Enter Osric. 

Osric. Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark. 

Ham. I humbly thank you, sir. — \_Aside to Horatio.] 
Dost know this water-fly ? ^^ 

Hora. \_Aside to Hamlet.] No, my good lord. 

Ham.- \_Aside to Horatio.] Thy state is the more gra- 
cious ; for 'tis a vice to know him. He hath much land, 
and fertile : let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall 
stand at the King's mess.^^ 'Tis a chough ; but, as I say, 
spacious in the possession of dirt. 

18 Hamlet justly looks forward to the coming of that news as the crisis 
of his task : it will bring things to a head, and give him a practicable twist 
on the King : he can then meet both him and the publie with justifying 
"proof oi his guilt. 

19 Hamlet and Laertes have lost each his father, and both have perhaps 
lost equally in Ophelia ; so that their cause of sorrow is much the same. 

20 Hamlet means " I'll solicit his good will; " the general meaning of 
favours in the Poet's time. 

21 In Troiliis and Cressida, v. i, Thersites says of Patroclus : " How the 
poor world is pestered with such water-flies ; diminutives of nature." As 
Johnson says, " A water-fly skips up and down upon the surface of the 
water without any apparent purpose or reason, and is thence the proper 
emblem of a busy trifler." 

22 This is meant as a sarcastic stroke at the King for keeping such a fin- 
ical sap-head near his person. Let even a biped puppy be rich, the lord pr 



2l8 HAMLET, ACT V. 

Osric. Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I 
should impart a thing to you from his Majesty. 

Ham. I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of spirit. Put 
your bonnet to his right use ; 'tis for the head. 

Osric. I thank your lordship, it is very hot. 

Ham. No, believe me, 'tis very cold ; the wind is north- 
erly. 

Osric. It is indiiferent cold, my lord, indeed. 

Ham. But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my 
complexion. 

Osric. Exceedingly, my lord ; it is very sultry, — as 'twere, 
— I cannot tell how. But, my lord, his Majesty bade me 
signify to you that he has laid a great wager on your head. 
Sir, this is the matter, — 

Ham. I beseech you, remember^'* — 

[Hamlet moves him to put on his hat. 

Osric. Nay, in good faith ; for mine ease, in good faith. 
Sir, here is newly come to Court Laertes ; believe me, an 
absolute gentleman, full of most excellent differences,^^ of 
very soft society and great showing : indeed, to speak feel- 
ingly of him, he is the card or calendar of gentry ; for you 

owner of large herds of cattle, and he shall be the King's bosom friend, and 
feed at his table. — In what ioViosNS, chough is a bird of the jackdaw sort; 
and Osric is aptly so called because he chatters euphuistic jargon by 
rote. 

2-1 The full phrase occurs in Love's Labours Lost, v. i : " I do beseech 
thee, remember thy courtesy ; I beseech thee, apparel thy head." Aptly ex- 
plained by Dr. Ingleby : " If any one, from ill-breeding or over politeness, 
stood uncovered a longer time than was necessary to perform the simple 
act of courtesy, the person saluted reminded him of the fact, that, the re- 
moval of the hat was a courtesy; and this was expressed by the euphemism, 
' Remember thy courtesy,' which thus implied, ' Complete your courtesy 
and replace your hat.' " 

25 In the affected phrase-making of this euphuist, excellent differences 
probably means distinctive excellences. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 219 

shall find in him the continent of what part a gentlemen 
would see. 

Ham. Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you ; ^6 
though, I know, to divide him inventorially would dizzy the 
arithmetic of memory,27 and yet but yaw^s neither, in re- 
spect of his quick sail.29 But, in the verity of extolment, I 
take him to be a soul of great article ; and his infusion of 
such dearth and rareness, as, to make true diction of him, 
his semblable is his mirror ; and who else would trace him, 
his umbrage,30 nothing more. 

Osric. Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him. 

Ham. The concernancy,^! sir? why do we wrap the gen- 
tleman in our more rawer breath ? 

26 " He suffers no loss in your description of him." 

2'^ " To distinguish all his good parts, and make a schedule or inventory 
of them, would be too much for the most mathematical head." 

28 This word occurs as a substantive in Massinger's Very Woman : " O, 
ihe.yaws that she will make ! Look to your stern, "dear mistress, and steer 
right." Where Gififord notes " A yaiv is that unsteady motion which a ship 
makes in a great swell, when, in steering, she inclines to the right or left of 
her course," Scott also has the word in the The Antiquary, " Thus escorted, 
the Antiquary moved along full of his learning, like a lordly man-of-war, 
and every now and then yawi??g to starboard and larboard to discharge a 
broadside upon his followers." — In the text, yaw is a verb, and is in the 
same construction with dizzy; "and yet would do nothing but yaw"; that 
is, vacillate, or reel hither and thither, instead of going straight ahead. 

29 In respect of is equivalent to in comparison with. Such is the com- 
mon meaning of the phrase in old writers. So that the sense of the passage 
comes thus : " To discriminate the good parts of Laertes, and make a full 
catalogue of them, would dizzy the head of an arithmetician, and yet would 
be but a slow and staggering process, compared to his swift sailing." Ham- 
let is running Osric's hyperbolical euphuism into the ground, and is pur- 
posely obscure, in order to bewilder the poor fop. 

so To trace is to track, or keep pace with. Umbrage, from the Latin 
umbra, is shadow. So that the meaning here is, " The only resemblance to 
him is in his mirror ; and nothing but his shadow can keep up with him." 

21 That is, " How does this concern us ? " 



220 HAMLET, ACT V. 

Osric. Sir ? 

Hora. Is't not possible to understand in another tongue ?32 
You will do't, sir, really. 

Ham, What imports the nomination of this gentleman ? 
' Osric, Of Laertes ? 

Hora. \_Aside to Hamlet.] His purse is empty already : 
all's golden words are spent. 

Ham. Of him, sir. 

Osric. I know you are not ignorant — 

Ham. I would you did, sir ; yet, in faith, if you did, it 
would not much approve me. Well, sir? 

Osric. You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes 
is — 

Ham. I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with 
him in excellence : but to know a man well, were to know 
himself.^^ 

Osric. I mean, sir, for his weapon ; but in the imputation 
laid on him by them, in his meed he's unfellow'd.^^ 

Ham. What's his weapon? 

Osric. Rapier and dagger. 

Ham. That's two of his weapons ; but, well? 

32 Horatio means to imply, that what with Osric's euphuism, and what 
with Hamlet's catching of Osric's style, they are not speaking in a tongue 
that can be understood ; and he hints that they try another tongue, that is, 
the common one. 

33 The meaning is, that he will not claim to appreciate the excellence of 
Laertes, as this would imply equal excellence in himself; on the principle 
that a man cannot understand that which exceeds his own measure. Ham- 
let goes into these subtilties on purpose to maze Osric. — The words, " but 
to know," mean " only to know." 

34 Unfellow'd is tmequalled. Fellow for eqtial is very frequent. — Meed 
for merit; also a frequent usage. — hnputation, also, for reputation. So in 
Troilus and Cressida, i. 3 : " Our imputation shall be oddly poised in this 
wild action." 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 221 

Osric. The King, sir, hath wager'd with him six Barbary 
horses ; against the which he has imponed,^^ as I take it, six 
French rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdle, 
hangers, and so. Three of the carriages, in faith, are very- 
dear to fancy, very responsive to the hilts, most delicate car- 
riages, and of very liberal conceit. 

Ham. What call you the carriages ? 

Hora. \_Aside to Hamlet.] I knew you must be edified 
by the margent ^^ ere you had done. 

Osric, The carriages, sir, are the hangers. 

Ham. The. phrase would be more germane ^^ to the matter, 
if we could carry cannon by our sides : I would it might be 
hangers till then. But, on : Six Barbary horses against six 
French swords, their assigns, and three liberal-conceited car- 
riages ; that's the French bet against the Danish. Why is 
this imponed, as you call it ? 

Osric. The King, sir, hath laid, that in a dozen passes be- 
tween yourself and him he shall not exceed you three hits r 
he hath laid, on twelve for nine ; and it would come to im- 
mediate trial, if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer.^s 

Ham. How, if I answer no ? 

Osric. I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in 
trial. 

35 Imponed is probably meant as an Osrician form of impawned. To 
impawn is to put in pledge, to stake or wager. 

36 " I knew you would have to be instructed by a marginal commentary." 
The allusion is to the printing of comments in the margin of books. So in 
Ro7neo and Juliet, i. 3 : — 

And what obscured in this fair volume lies, 
Find written in the margent of his eyes. 

37 Germane is kindred or akin ; hence, appropriate. 

38 That is, vouchsafe to accept the proposition. Hamlet chooses to tak?" 
it in another sense, because he likes to quiz Osric. 



2 22 HAMLET, ACT V. 

Ham. Sir, I will walk here in the hall : if it please his 
Majesty, 'tis the breathing-time ^^ of day with me; let the 
foils be brought, the gentleman willing, and the King hold his 
purpose, I will win for him if I can ; if not, I will gain noth- 
ing but my shame and the odd hits. 

Osric. Shall I re-dehver you e'en so? 

Ham. To this effect, sir ; after what flourish your nature 
will. 

Osric. I commend my duty to your lordship. 

Ham. Yours, yours. \_Exit Osric] — He does well to 
commend it himself; there are no tongues els,e for's turn. 

Hora. This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.^^ 

Ham. He did comply with his dug,"*! before he suck'd it. 
Thus has he — and many more of the same bevy that I know 
the drossy age dotes on — only got the tune of the time and 
outward habit of encounter ; a kind of yesty collection,^^ 
which carries them through and through the most fond and 
winnowed opinions ; ^"^ and do but blow them to their trial, 
the bubbles are out. ^„^,^ „ Lord. ' 

Lord. My lord, his Majesty commended him to you by 

39 " The breat/mtg-\\m.e " is the time for exercise. The use of to breathe 
for to exercise occurs repeatedly in Shakespeare. It was common. 

40 Meaning that Osric is a raw, unfledged, foohsh fellow. It was a com- 
mon comparison for a forward fool. Thus in Meres's Wits Treasury, 1598 : 
" As the lapwing runneth away with the .shell on her head, as soon as she is 
hg.tched." 

41 Comply is used in the same sense here as in note 59, page 113. In Ful- 
wel's Art of Flatter ie, 1579, the same idea occurs : " The very sucking babes 
hath a kind of a.dulation towards their nurses for the dug." 

42 Yesty is frothy. A gathering of mental and lingual froth. 

43 Here, fond is affected. The passage is well explained in the Clarendon 
edition : " Osric, and others like him, are compared to the chaff which 
mounts higher than the sifted wheat, and to the bubbles which rise to the 
surface through the deeper water." 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 223 

young Osric, who brings back to him, that you attend him in 
the hall : he sends to know if your pleasure hold to play with 
Laertes, or that you will take longer time. 

Ham. I am constant to my purposes ; they follow the 
King's pleasure : if his fitness speaks, mine is ready ; now or" 
whensoever, provided I be so able as now. 

Lord. The King and Queen and all are coming down.. 

Ham. In happy time.^^ 

Lord. The Queen desires you to use some gentle enter- 
tainment to Laertes before you fall to play. 

Ham. She well instructs me. \_Exii Lord. 

Hora. You will lose this wager, my lord. 

Ham. I do not think so : since he went into France, I 
have been in continual practice ; I shall win at the odds. 
But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart j 
but it is no matter. 

Hora. Nay, good my lord, — 

Ha77i. It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain- 
giving ^^ ag would perhaps trouble a woman.' 

Hora. If your mind disHke any thing, obey it : I will fore- 
stall their repair hither, and say you are not fit. 

Ham. Not a whit ; we defy ^^ augury : there is a special 
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to 
come ; if it be not to come, it will be now ; if it be not now, 
yet it will come ; the readiness is all. Since no man knows 
aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes P^"^ 

44 That is, in fittiitg time ; like the French a la bonne heure. 

45 Gain-giving probably means misgiving; formed in the same way as 
gainsay and gainstrive. 

46 To defy, here, is to renounce or disclaim. Often so. 

^■^ Johnson interprets the passage thus : " Since no man knows aught of 
the state which he leaves ; since he cannot judge what other years may pro- 
duce ; why should we be afraid of leaving life betimes ? " 



2 24 HAMLET, ACT V. 

Enter the King, the Queen, Laertes, Lords, Osric, and 
Attendants with foils, &€. 

King. Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me. 
\The KmG puts Laertes's hand inio Hamlet's. 

Ham. Give me your pardon, sir : I've done you wrong ; 
But pardon't, as you are a gentleman. 
This presence knows. 

And you must needs have heard, how I am punish'd 
With sore distraction. What I have done, 
That might your nature, honour, and exception 
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness. 
Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet : 
If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away, 
And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes, 
Then Hamlet does it not ; Hamlet denies it. 
Who does it, then ? His madness. If the so, 
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd ; 
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy. 
Sir, in this audience, 
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil 
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, 
That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house. 
And hurt my brother. 

Laer. I am satisfied in nature. 

Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most 
To my revenge : but in my terms of honour 
I stand aloof ; and will no reconcilement 
Till by some elder masters, of known honour, 
I have a voice and precedent of peace,^^ 

48 The meaning probably is, " till some experts in the code of honour 
give me the warrant of custom and usage for standing on peaceful terms 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 225 

To keep my name ungored. But, till that time, 
I do receive your offer'd love like love. 
And will not wrong it. 

H<^in. I embrace it freely ; 

And will this brother's wager frankly play. 

Give us the foils. — Come on. 

L^^f^' Come, one for me. 

Ham. I'll be your foil, Laertes :49 in mine ignorance 
Your skill shall, like a star i' the darkest night, 
Stick fiery off indeed. 

Laer. You mock me, sir. 

Ham. No, by this hand. 

King. Give them the foils, young Osric. — Cousin Hamlet, 
You know the wager? 

^^^^^' Very well, my lord ; 

Your Grace hath laid the odds ^o o' the weaker side. 

King. I do not fear it ; I have seen you both : 
But, since he's better'd, we have therefore odds.^i 

Laer. This is too heavy ; let me see another. 

Ham. This likes me well. —These foils have all a length? 

with you." Laertes thinks, or pretends to think, that the laws of honour 
require him to insist on a stern vindication of his manhood. Hamlet has 
before spoken of Laertes as " a very noble youth." In this part of the scene 
he has his faculties keenly on the alert against Claudius ; but it were a sin 
in him even to suspect Laertes of any thing so unfathomably base as the 
treachery now on foot. 

49 Hamlet plays on the word foil-, which here has the sense of continst, 
or that which sets off a thing, and makes it show to advantage ; as a dark 
night sets off a star, "when only one is shining in the sky." 

50 The odds here referred to is the value of the stakes, the King having 
wagered six Barbary horses against a few rapiers, poniards, &c. ; which was 
about as twenty to one. 

61 Here the reference is to the three odd hits in Hamlet's favour, the num- 
bers being nine and twelve. The King affects to regard this as a fair oifset 
for Laertes's improved skill in the handling of his weapon. 



2 26 HAMLET, ACT V. 

Osric. Ay, my good lord. \They prepare to play. 

King. Set me the stoups of wine upon that table.— 
If Hamlet give the first or second hit, 
Or quit ^^ in answer of the third exchange, 
Let all the battlements their ordnance fire : 
The King shall drink to Hamlet's better breath ; 
And in the cup an union ^^ shall he throw, 
Richer than that which four successive kings 
In Denmark's crown have worn. Give me the cups ; 
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak, 
The trumpet to the cannoneer without. 
The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth. 
Now the King drinks to Hamlet! — Come, begin ; — 
And you, the judges,^^ bear a wary eye. 

Ham. Come on, sir. 

Laer. Come, my lord. \They play. 

Ham. One. 

Laer. No. 

Ham. Judgment. 

Osric. A hit, a very palpable hit. 

Laer. Well ; — again. 

King. Stay ; give me drink. — Hamlet, this pearl is thine j 
Here's to thy health. — 

\_Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within. 
Give him the cup. 

52 Quit, again, for requite, or retaliate. See page 216, note 16. 

63 Union was a name for the largest and finest pearls, such as were worn 
in crowns and coronets. So in Florio's Italian Dictionary, 1598 : " Also a 
faire, great, orient pearle, called an tmion." A rich gem thus put into a cup 
of wine was meant as present to the drinker of the wine. Of course the 
u7tion in this case was a preparation of poison. 

54 These Judges were the umpires appointed beforehand, with Osric at 
their head, to decide in case of any dispute arising between the fencers. 



-SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. -227 

Ham. I'll play this bout first ; set it by awhile. — 
Come. \They play?^ Another hit ; what say you ? 

Laer. A touch, a touch, I do confess. 

King. Our son shall win. 

Queen. He's hot, and scant of breath. — 

Here, Hamlet, take my napkin,^^ rub thy brows : 
The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet. 

Ham. Good madam ! ^^ 

King. Gertrude, do not drink. 

Queen. I will, my lord ; I pray you, pardon me. 

King. \Aside7[ It is the poison'd cup \ it is too late. 

Ham. I dare not drink yet, madam ; by-and-by.^^ 

Queen. Come, let me wipe thy face. 

Laer. My lord, I'll hit him now. 

King. I do not think't. 

Lae7\ \Aside^ And yet 'tis almost 'gainst my conscience. 

Ha77i. Come, for the third, Laertes : you but dally : 
I pray you, pass with your best violence ; 
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.^^ 

Laer. Say you so? come on. \They play, 

Osric. Nothing, neither way. 

55 Napkin was continually used for handkerchief. 

56 This exclamation is probably meant to hint that Hamlet suspects, or 
more than suspects, the contents of that cup. The same appears more 
clearly just after in " I dare not drink yet." 

57 Hamlet now sees, or judges, that his time has come : the playing 
done, he will attend to that cup, and invite Claudius to drink it. Such is 
evidently his purpose. 

58 To make a wanton of a man, as the phrase is here used, is to treat 
him as a child, to avoid playing your best with him, or rather to play the 
game into his hands. — This is a quiet, but very significant stroke of de- 
lineation. Laertes is not playing his best, and it is the conscience of what 
is at the point of his foil that keeps him from doing so; and the effects are 
perceptible to Hamlet, though he dreams not of the reason. 



228 HAMLET, ACT V. 

Laer, ELave at you now ! 

[Laertes wounds Hamlet ; then, in scuffling, they 
change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes.^^ 

King. Part them ; they are incensed. 

Ham. Nay, come, again. \_The Q\j'EY,i<i falls. 

Osric. . Look to the Queen there, ho ! 

Hora. They bleed on both sides. — How is it, my lord ? 

Osric. How is't, Laertes ? 

Laer. Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric ; 
I 'm justly kill'd with mine own treachery. 

Ham. How does the Queen ? 

King. She swoons to see them bleed. 

Queen. No, no, the drink, the drink, — O my dear Ham- 
let, — 
The drink, the drink ! I am poison'd ! \_Dies. 

Ham. O villainy ! — Ho ! let the door be lock'd ! — 
Treachery 1 seek it out ! 

Laer. It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain ; 
No medicine in the world can do thee good ; 
In thee there is not half an hour of life : 
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, 
Unbated and envenom'd. The foul practice 
Hath turn'd itself on me : lo, here I lie, 
Never to rise again. Thy mother's poison'd ; — 
I can no more. The King, — the King's to blame. 

59 Up to this moment Hamlet has not put forth his strength ; he has 
been merely playing : now, on being unexpectedly pierced, he is instantly 
stung into fiery action ; and he is a terrible man with the sword, when his 
blood is up. — The exchanging of foils takes place well in Mr. Edwin 
Booth's ordering of the matter on the stage. There Hamlet, in a rapture 
of energy and adroitness, strikes the foil out of Laertes's hand, picks it up, 
and throws down his own, which, again, is presently picked up by 
Laertes. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 229 

Ham. The point envenom'd too ! — 
Then, venom, to thy work ! \_Stabs the King. 

All. Treason ! treason ! 

King. O, yet defend me, friends ! I am but hurt. 

Ham. Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, 
Drink off this potion ! Is thy union here ? 
Follow my mother ! [King dies.^^ 

Laer. He is justly served ; 

It is a poison temper'd by himself. — 
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet ; 
Mine and my father's death come not upon thee, 
Nor thine on me ! \_Dies.^^ 

Ham. Heaven make thee free of it ! I follow thee. — 
I'm dead, Horatio. — Wretched Queen, adieu ! — 
You that look pale and tremble at this chance. 
That are but mutes or audience to this act. 
Had I but time, — as this fell sergeant,^^ Death, 
Is strict in his arrest, — 0,1 could tell you, — 
But let it be. — Horatio, I am dead ; 
Thou livest : report me and my cause aright 
To the unsatisfied. 

Hora. Never believe it : 

I am more an antique Roman than a Dane : 
Here's yet some liquor left. 

Ham. As thou'rt a man, 

Give me the cup : let go ; by Heaven, I'll have't. 

60 Of course the King dies of the wound, — dies without drinking the 
poison. Hamlet, instantly seeing the way clear for the avenging stroke, 
and having a fi-ee thrust at Claudius, can hardly be supposed to leave any 
thing for poison to do. 

61 Laertes also dies of the wound, not of the ve?tom. 

62 Sergeant was the title of a sheriff's officer^ whose business it was to 
make arrests and execute warrants. 



230 HAMLET, ACT V. 

God, Horatio ! what a wounded name, 

Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me ! 
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart. 
Absent thee from felicity awhile, 
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, 
To tell my story. — \March afar off, and shot within. 

What warlike noise is this ? 

Osric. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Po- 
land, 
To the ambassadors of England gives 
This warlike volley. 

Ham. O, I die, Horatio ; 

The potent poison quite o'er-crows ^^ my spirit : 

1 cannot live to hear the news from England ; 
But I do prophesy th' election lights 

On Fortinbras : he has my dying voice ; 

So tell him, with th' occurrents, more and less. 

Which have solicited ^^ — \JDies. 

Hora» The rest is silence : 

Now cracks a noble heart. — Good night, sweet Prince ; 
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest ! — 
Why does the drum come hither. {March within. 

Enter Fortinbras, the English Ambassadors, and others. 

For tin. Where is this sight ? 

Hora. What is it ye would see ? ' 

If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search. 

63 To overcrow is to overcofne, to subdue. The word was borrowed from 
the cock-pit ; the victorious cock crowing in triumph over the vanquished. 

64 Occurrents was much used in the Poet's time for events or occurrences. 
— Solicited \s prompted or excited; as "this supernatural soliciting*' in 
Macbeth. — " More and less" is greater axid smaller ; a common usage with 
the old writers. 



SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. 23 1 

Fortin. This quarry cries on havoc.^^ — O proud Death, 
What feast is toward ^^ in thine eternal cell, 
That thou so many princes at a shot 
So bloodily hast struck? 

I A?nbas, The sight is dismal ; 

And our affairs from England come too late : 
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing. 
To tell him his commandment is fulfill'd ; 
That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. 
Where should we have our thanks ? 

Hora. Not from his mouth. 

Had it th' abihty of life to thank you ; 
He never gave commandment for their death. 
But since, so jump ^^ upon this bloody question. 
You from the Polack wars, and you from England, 
Are here arrived, give order that these bodies 
High on a stage be placed to the view ; 
And let me speak to th' ^^ yet unknowing world 
How these things came about : so shall you hear 
Of carnal,69 bloody, and unnatural acts j 
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters ; 
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause ; "^^ 

65 Quarry, a term of the chase, was used for a heap of dead game. To 
cry on, as before noted, is to exclaim, or cry out, against. Havoc here means 
indiscriminate slaughter. To shout havoc ! in a battle, was a signal for giv- 
ing no quarter to the enemy. So that the meaning in the text is, " This pile 
of corpses cries out against indiscriminate slaughter." 

66 Toward, again, iox forthcoming, or at hand. See page 50, note 19. 

67 As before noted, ju7np was used for just or exactly. 

68 The Poet often thus elides the, so as to make it coalesce with the pre- 
ceding word into one syllable. So he h^s forth', by th\from th', on th', &c. 

69 Carnal, here, "probably means sanguinary, cruel, or inhuman; refer- 
ring to the murder of Hamlet's father. 

70 The phrase/z<!/ on here means instigated or set on foot. Cunning, re- 



232 HAMLET, ACT V. 

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook 
Fall'n on th' inventors' heads : all this can I 
Truly deliver. 

Fortin. Let us haste to hear it, 

And call the noblest to the audience. 
For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune : 
I have some rights of memory ^1 in this kingdom, 
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me. 

Hora. Of that I shall have also cause to speak, 
And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more ; '^'^ 
But let this same be presently perform'd, 
Even while men's minds are wild, lest more mischance, 
On plots and errors, happen. 

Fortin. Let four captains 

Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage ; 
For he was likely, had he been put on, 
T' have proved most royally : and, for his passage, 
The soldiers' music and the rites of war 
Speak loudly for him. — 
Take up the bodies. — Such a sight as this 
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. — 
Go, bid the soldiers shoot. 

\A dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies ; 
after which a peal of ordnance is shot off. 

fers, apparently, to Hamlet's action touching " the packet," oxid. forced cause, 
to the " compelling occasion," which moved him to that piece of practice. 

■^1 Rights of 7nemory appears to mean rights founded in prescription or 
'■he order of inheritance. 

■^2 Whose vote will induce others to vote the same way. Horatio refers 
to Hamlet saying of Fortinbras, " he has my dying voice." 



CRITICAL NOTES ON HAMLET. 



ACT I., SCENE I. 

Page 51. " As, by the same co-mart. 

And carriage of the article designed. 
His fell to Hamlet." 

In the first of these lines, the folio has cov'nafit instead of co-marty 
which is the reading of the quartos. Shakespeare elsewhere uses to 
viart iox to trade or to bargain. — In the second Kne, I give the read- 
ing of the second folio; the earlier editions having, with various spell- 
ing, designe instead of designed. The confounding of final d and final e 
is among the commonest of misprints. 

P. 52. "The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead 
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets : 
So^ stars with trains of fire ; and dews of blood ; 
Disasters in the Sun ; and the moist star," &c. 

This passage is not in the folio. The quartos have no point after 
streets, and they have " As starres with trains of fire," &c. The passage 
has troubled the commentators vastly, and a great many changes have 
been proposed, all quite unsatisfactory. Dyce pronounces it "' hope 
lessly mutilated," and I once thought so too. But it rather seems to 
me now that a just and fitting sense may be got by merely changing 
As to So. See foot-note 33. 

P. 52. "Unto our climature and countrymen." 

So Dyce. The quartos have climatures. Not in the folio. 

332 



234 HAMLET. 

ACT I., SCENE II. 

Po 56. "Yet SO far hath discretion fought with nature, 
That we with wiser sorrow think on him/' &c. 
The old copies have wisest instead of wiser, which I think the con- 
text fairly requires. 

P. 60. " Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief," &c. 
The old copies have moodes and moods, which appear to be only old 
ways of spelling modes. At all events, moods, in its present meaning, 
does not suit the context, as Hamlet here refers entirely to the outward 
marks of sadness. 

P. 6 1 . " You are the most immediate to our throne ; 

And with no less nobility of love 
Than that which dearest father bears his son 
Do I impart toward you." 
Dr. Badham would read " And with nobility no less of love," &c. 
This would give a definite object to i^npart, which now has no object 
expressed. So that the change is at least plausible. On the other 
hand, with this reading, nobility would have to be understood as mean- 
ing the honour of being heir-presumptive. But if may well be doubted 
whether Shakespeare would have used nobility with this meaning ; and 
nobility, in the proper sense of the term, Hamlet has already by birth. 
If we could read " With this nobility no less of love," &c., the sense 
would come right ; but that would perhaps be an unwarrantable change. 
See foot-note 24. 

P. 64. " I would not hear your enemy say so." 

So the quartos after that of 1603. Instead of hear, the folio has 
have, which some editors prefer. But surely hear accords much better 
with what lollows. 

P. 65. /^ Season your admiration for a while 

With an attentive ear, till I deliver," &c. 
The second and third quartos, and the folio, have " an atient eare "; 
the first, fourth, and fifth quartos have attentive. All the old copies 
read " till I may deliver." Pope omits niay. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 235 

P. 65. " In the dead vast and middle of the night." 

So the first quarto, and the fifth. The other quartos and the folio 
have wast and waste instead of vast. 

P. 65. ' "Whilst they, distiWd 

Almost to jelly with the act' of fear," &c. 

So the quartos. Instead of distilPd, the folio has bestiVd, which 
Collier's second folio alters to bechilVd. In support of distilPd, Dyce 
aptly quotes from Sylvester's Dzi Bartas, 1641 : "Melt thee, distill 
thee, turne to wax or snow." See foot-note 42. 

P. (>(>, " But answer made it none ; yet once methought 
It lifted up its head," &c. 

The old copies have "lifted up it head." So, again, in v. i, of this 
play : " The corse they follow did with desperate hand fordo it own 
life." The Poet has as many as fourteen other instances of it thus used 
possessively; which is at least curious, as showing his reluctance to 
admit its, which was then just creeping into use. Some insist on keep- 
ing strictly to the old letter in all such cases ; but this, it seems to me, 
is conservatism in it dotage. 

P. 67. " Let it be tenable in your silence still." 

So the quartos. The folio has treble instead of tenable. 

ACT I., SCENE III. 

P. 69. " For on his choice depends 

The safety and the health of the whole State." 

The quartos read " The safety and health " ; the folio, " The sanc- 
tity and health." Probably, as Malone thought, safety was altered to 
sanctity merely because a trisyllable was wanted to complete the verse; 
the editor not perceiving that the article had dropped out before health. 
Hanmer reads, " The sanity and health." The reading in the text is 
Warburton's. 

P. 69. "As he in his particular act and place 
May give his saying deed." 
So the quartos. The folio reads " in his peculiar Sect 2iXidi force." 



236 HAMLET. 

P. 70. " TK' iLnchariest maid is prodigal enough, 
If she unmask her beauty to the Moon." 

The old copies read " The chariest maid." This gives a very vreak 
sense, and one, it seems to me, not at all suited to the occasion or the 
character, "The c/?«rj/maid" would be far better ; but Laertes is apt 
to be superlative in thought and speech; and surely nothing less than 
tmchariest v\^ould be intense enough for him here. 

P. 71. " And they in France of the best rank and station 
Are most select and generous, chief in that." 

The first quarto reads " Are of a most select and generall chiefe in 
that." The other quartos have "Are of a most select and generous, 
chiefe in that"; the folio, "generous cheff m. that." A great variety 
of changes has been made or proposed. The reading in the text is 
Rowe's, and is adopted by many of the best editors. 

P. 73. " Or — not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, 
Running it thus — you'll tender me a fool." 

Instead -of Rtmning, the quartos have Wrong, and the folio Roam- 
ing. Rtcnning \N2.s conjectured by both Dyce and Collier independ- 
ently, and is also the reading of Collier's second folio. 

P. 74. " For they are brokers, — 

Not of that dye which their investments show, 
But mere implorators of unholy suits. 
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds, 
The better to beguile." 

In the second of these lines, the quartos, after 1603, have "Not of 
that die " / the folio, " Not of the eye." Some editors have strongly 
insisted on eye ; whereupon Dyce asks, — " though our early writers 
talk of ' an eye of green,'' ' an eye of red,'' ' an eye of bhie^ &c., do they 
ever use eye by itself to denote colour ? " — In the fourth line, again, 
the old copies have bonds instead of bawds, which is the reading of 
Theobald, Pope, and Collier's second folio. The context, and especially 
the word brokers, is decisive that a noun signifying persons, and not 
things, is required. Broker was often used as a synonym of bawd^ and 
so it is here. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 237 



ACT I., SCENE IV. 

P. 77. "By the o'ergrowth of some complexion." 

All this speech, after " More honour'd in the breach than the ob- 
servance," is wanting in the quarto of 1603 and the folio. The other 
quartos have " By their ore-grow'th " ; an error which the context 
readily corrects. 

P. 77. " Their virtues else — be they as pure as grace, 
As infinite as man may undergo — 
Shall in the general censure take corruption 
From that particular fault ; the dram of leav'n 
Doth all the noble substance of ^em sour, 
To his own scandal." 

Not in the first quarto or the folio. In the first of these lines, the 
other quartos have His instead of Their ; another error which the con- 
text readily corrects. In the fourth and fifth lines, the quartos of 1604 
and 1605 read "the dram of eale Doth all the noble substance of a 
doubts The later quartos have the same, except that they substitute 
ease for eale. This dreadful passage may, I think, be fairly said to have 
baffled all the editors and commentators. The Cambridge edition 
notes upwards of forty different readings which have been printed or 
proposed, all of them so unsatisfactory that the editors reject them, and 
give the old text, apparently regarding the corruption as hopeless. 
There is surely no possibility of making any sense out of it as it stands ; 
and so far, I believe, all are agreed. Lettsom, I think, was the first to 
perceive the reference to St. Paul's proverbial saying : " Shakespeare's 
meaning," says he, " evidently is, that a little leaven leavens the whole 
lump " ; and the same thought occurred to me before I lighted on his 
remark. This clew was not long in guiding me to the two other changes 
I have made : in fact, the present reading was suggested to me by the 
passage from Bacon quoted in foot-note li, which see. It gives a 
sense, I hope a natural and fitting one. And the language is in just 
accordance with what Hamlet says a little before, — " that too much 
d'tx-leavens the form of plausive manners." Nor was leaven; especially 
if written in the shortened form lev'n^ unlikely to be corrupted into 



238 HAMLET, 

eale : at all events, we have many undoubted misprints much more em- 
phatic than that. I was at one time minded to substitute yeast for eale; 
but I doubt whether yeast was ever used for leaven in Shakespeare's 
time : certainly he does not use it so anywhere else. 

P. 81. "And each particular hair to stand on end." 
So the first quarto. The other old copies have " stand an end." 

P. 81. " List, list, O Hst ! " 

So the quartos, after 1603. The folio reads "List Hamlet, oh list." 

P. 82. "That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf." 
So the quartos. The folio has rots instead of roots. 

P. 82. "With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts," &c. 
The old copies have wits instead of wit. Corrected by Pope. 

P. 84. " Cut off even in the blossom of my sins.''^ 

The old copies read " the Blossomes of my sinned Dyce conjec- 
tured blossom : the reading in the text is Mr. P. A. Daniel's, The mis- 
printing of plurals and singulars for each other occurs very often. 

P. 84. " With all my imperfections on my head. 
Ham, O, horrible ! O, horrible ! most horrible ! 
Ghost. If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not ; " &c. 

The old copies, except the first quarto, give nothing tq Hamlet 
here, but print all three of these lines as spoken by the Ghost. The 
first quarto makes Hamlet exclaim " O God ! " It was suggested to 
Johnson, by " a very learned lady," that the second line should be given 
to Hamlet j and Garrick is said to have adopted that arrangement on 
the stage. Rann first printed as in the text. And surely so it ought 
to be. 

P. 85. " And shall I couple Hell? O, fie ! — Hold, hold, 
my heart ; " &c. 

So the second and third quartos. The fourth and fifth quartos and 
the folio omit the second hold. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 239 

P. 89. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, 
Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 

So all the quartos. The folio has our instead of yotir. The latter 
has at least as good authority, and is, I think, the better reading of the 
two, inasmuch as it conveys a mild sneer, which is well in keeping 
with Hamlet's temper and cast of mind. Of course the stress is on 
philosophy, not on your. 



ACT II., SCENE I. 

P. 91. "And finding, 

By this encompassment and drift of question. 
That they do know my son, come you more nearer 
Than your particular demands will touch it." 

There is some doubt whether, in the last of these lines, we ought to 
print Than or Then. The old copies have Then ; but this determines 
nothing, as that form was continually used in both senses. It seemed 
to me very clear, at one time, that we ought to read " come you more 
nearer ; Then your particular demands," &c. ; on the ground that par- 
ticular inquiries would come to the point faster than general ones. If 
this notion be wrong, as it probably is, I am indebted to Mr. H. H. 
Furness for having set me right. See foot-note 3. 

P. 91. " You must not put another scandal on him 
Than he is open to incontinency." 

The old copies have That instead of Than. This is nowise recon- 
cilable with the context, and involves a contradiction too palpable, 
surely, to be put into the mouth of Polonius. Yet " another scandal 
than he is open," &c., sounds rather harsh : perhaps we should read 
"Than //^a^ he's open," &c. And it appears that, where two consecu- 
tive words begin with the same letters, as than and that, one of them 
is apt to drop out in the printing or transcribing. The reading in the 
text is Keightley's. 



240 HAMLET. 

P. 94. " He falls to such perusal of my face 

As he would draw it. Long time stay'd he so." 

So Pope. The old copies are without time, thus untuning the 
rhythm. 

ACT II., SCENE II. 

P. 102. "You know, sometimes he walks /^r hours together 
Here in the lobby." 

So Hanmer and Collier's second folio. The old copies read " walkes 
foure houres together." 

P. 104. " For if the Sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being 
a ^^(^"^ kissing carrion," &c. 

So all the old copies, and rightly, I have no doubt. Warburton sub- 
stituted god for good, and the change was most extravagantly praised by 
Johnson. I not only believe the old text to be right, but can get no 
fitting sense out of the modern reading. The latter, however, has 
been adopted by nearly all the leading editors : even the Cambridge 
editors adopt it, I understand the meaning of the old text to be, " a 
dead dog, which is a good carrion for the Sun to kiss, and thus im- 
pregnate with new life." " A good kissing person " for a person good 
to kiss, or good for kissing, is a very common form of speech, and one 
often used by Shakespeare. See foot-note 27. 

P. 107. "And sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear at 
a halfpenny." 
So Hanmer. The old copies read " too deare a halfpenny." 

P. 108. " What a piece of work is man ! " 

So the quarto of 1637. The earlier quartos have the a misplaced: 
"What peece of worke is a man." The folios have the a in both 
places : " What a piece of work is a man ! " 

P. 109. "The clown shall make those laugh whose lungs 

are tickle o' the sear." 

This is not in the quartos, and the folio has tickled instead of tickle. 
The correction (and it is of the first class) was proposed by Staunton. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 24 1 

P. no. "I think their innovation comes by the means of 
the late inhibition^ 

In the old text, innovation and itihibition change places with each 
other. Johnson notes upon the passage as follows : " Hamlet inquires 
not about an ' inhibition,' but an ' innovation ' : the answer probably 
was, — * I think their innovation,' that is, their new practice of strolling, 
' comes by means of the late inhibition.' " See foot-note 47. 

P, III. "These are now the fashion; and so b e flattie thQ 
common stages," &c. 

So the second folio. The first has be-ratled instead of berattte, — Of 
this and the six following speeches there are no traces in any of the 
quartos, except the first, and but slight traces there. 

P. III. "If they should grow themselves to common play- 
ers, — as it is most like^^ &c. 
The folio reads " as it is like juostP See preceding note. 

P. 114. " O Jephtha, what a treasure hadst thou ! 
Polo. What treasure had he, my lord? " 

So Walker. The old copies read " What a treasure had he." Prob- 
ably the a got repeated accidentally from the line above. Walker says, 
" What treasure^ surely, for grammar's sake." 

P. 115. " For look where my abridgements co7ne" 
So the folio. The quartos, " my abridgeinent comesP 

P. 115. "You are welcome, masters; welcome, all. I am 
glad to see ye well ; welcome, good friends." 

The old copies read " I am glad to see thee well." An error which 
the context rectifies. 

P. 117. "Nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the 

author of affectation T 

So the folio. Instead of affectation^ the quartos have affection, 
Thich was sometimes used for affectation. 



242 HAMLET. 

P. 123. "That I, the son of a A^2x father murder'd," &c. 

So the fourth, fifth, and sixth quartos. The other quartos and the 
foHo oxait father. 

ACT III., SCENE I. 

P. 125. ^^ Most free of question, but of our demands 
Niggard in his iQ^^ly.''^ 

The old text has Most free and Niggard transposed ; which nowise 
accords with the course of the dialogue referred to, nor with the first 
speech of Guildenstern in this scene. The correction is Warburton's, 
who notes upon the old reading thus : " This is given as the description 
of the conversation of a man whom the speaker found not forward 
to be sounded ; and who kept aloof vfYi^n they would bring him to con- 
fession. Shakespeare certainly wrote it just the other way." It has 
been suggested that perhaps " a correct account of the interview " was 
not intended. But I can see no reason why Rosencrantz should wish 
to misrepresent it. See foot-note 2. 

P. 126. "And, for your part, Ophelia, I do wish 

That your good beauty be the happy cause," &c. 

So Walker. Instead of beauty, the old copies have Beauties ; an 
easy misprint when the word was written beautie. 

P. 127. "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." 

Walker says that " stings is undoubtedly the true reading." Perhaps 
■he is right; but slings and arrows were often spoken of together in the 
language of ancient warfare. And the line, as it stands, is so much a 
household word, that it seems hardly well to make any change. 

P. 127. "The pangs of disprizedlovc, the law's delay," &c. 

So the folio. The quartos have despiz'd instead of disprized. The 
folio reading is the stronger; for if a love unprized \>q hard to bear, a 
love scorned must be much harder. 

P. 128. "When he himself might his quietus make 

With a bare bodkin ? who'd these fardels bear," &c. 
The quartos read " who would fardels beare "; the folio, "who woul^ 



CRITICAL NOTES. 



243 



these fardles beare." The contraction of who would to who'd is Walk- 
er's. I prefer the folio reading, because it makes what follows more 
continuous with what precedes; and it seems more natural that Ham- 
let should still keep his mind on the crosses already mentioned. 

P. 129. " My honour'd lord, / know right well you did." 

So the folio. The quartos have '^ you know." The folio reading 
has, I think, more delicacy, and at least equal feeling. 

P. 130. "With more offences at my beck than I have thoughts 
to put them in," &c. 

Collier's second folio changes beck to back, and Walker would make 
the same change. 

P. 131. "The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, 
sword." 

Such is the order of the words in the first quarto. The other old 
copies transpose scholar's and soldier's. This naturally connects tongue 
with soldier, and sword with scholar ; which is certainly not the mean- 
ing. 

ACT III., SCENE II. 

P. 134. "Now, this overdone, or come tardy of, though it 
make the unskilful laugh," &c. 

So the sixth quarto. The other old copies read "-tardy off'' Mason 
conjectured " tardy of" ; and Walker proposed the same. See foot- 
note 5. 

P. 134. "Nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor Turk." 

So the first quarto. Instead of Turk, the other quartos have man, 
and the folio Norman. 

P. 134. "That I have thought some of Nature's journey- 
men had made them, and not made them well," &c. 

The old copies read "had made men." Theobald conjectured them, 
and so Rann printed. Farmer proposed the men, which may be bet- 



244 HAMLET. 

ter, but gives the same sense. Surely, at all events, men cannot be 
right ; for that must mean all men, or men in general; whereas the 
context fairly requires the meaning to be limited to the men that " imi- 
tated humanity so abominably." 

P. 138. " Nay, then let the Devil wear black, for I'll have a 
suit of sabell.^^ 

The old copies read " a suite of SablesP As sable is itself a mourn- 
ing colour, the oppugnancy of the two clauses is evident. Warburton 
saw the discrepancy, and changed y&r to ^fore. This makes the mean- 
ing to be, " let the Devil put on mourning before I will." The reading 
in the text was proposed by a writer in The Critic, 1854, page 317. It 
seems to me to give just the sense wanted. See foot-note 16. 

P. 143. " Gonzago is the King's name." 

Here, instead of King, the old copies have Duke. But in the stage - 
directions for the dumb-show the same person is repeatedly called 
King, as he also is a little after : " This is one Lucianus, nephew to 
the KingP Probably the error crept in somehow from the first quarto, 
where the King and Queen of the interlude are called Duke and 
Duchess. 

P. 148. ^^ Rosen. My lord, you once did love me. 

Ham. So I do still, by these pickers and stealers." 

So the folio. The quartos have " And do still," I think the former 
gives a characteristic shade of meaning which is lost in the latter. See 
foot-note 51. 

P. 150. "And do such bitter business as the day 
Would quake to look on." 

So the folio. The quartos read " such business as the bitter day^ 



CRITICAL NOTES. 245 

ACT III., SCENE IV. 

P. 156. "I'll sconce me even here. 

Pray you be round with him." 

So Hanmer and Collier's second folio. The old copies, after 1603, 
have silence instead of sconce. The corresponding passage of the first 
quarto reads " I'll shrowde myselfe behinde the Arras." In The Merry 
Wives, iii., 3, Falstaff says, " I will ensconce me behind the arras." 

P. 156. Queen. " Why, how now, Hamlet ! what's the mat- 
ter now ? 
Have you forgot me ? " 
The old copies print these clauses as so many distinct speeches, 
assigning the second, "what's the matter now?" to Hamlet. Walker 
says "Perhaps all this belongs to the Queen" ; whereupon Dyce notes, 
" I do not think so." Nevertheless I am satisfied that Walker's con- 
jecture is right. 

P. 162. "Your bedded hairs, like Hfe in excrements, 
Start up and stand on end." 

The second and third quartos and the folio have ^^ start up and 
stand''' ; the later quartos, "starts up and stands''"' ; while all the old 
copies, except the first, where the passage is not found, have haire^ in- 
stead of hairs, which is Rowe's reading. 

P. 162. " Lest with this piteous action you convert 
My stern affects^ 

Instead of affects, the old copies have effects. The correction is 
Singer's ; who justly observes that " the ' piteous action ' of the Ghost 
could not alter things effected, but might move Hamlet to a less stern 
mood of mind." The same error occurs elsewhere. 

P. 164. "That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat 
Of habits evil, is angel yet in this," &c. 
So Thirlby proposed, and Theobald printed. The quartos have 



246 HAMLET. 

devill instead of evil. The passage is not in the folio. With devil, the 
text seems to me quite insusceptible of any fair or fitting explanation ; 
and the hard shifts that have been resorted to for the purpose of mak- 
ing sense out of it, are to me strong argument of corruption. See 
foot-note 28. 

P. 165. "For use almost can change the stamp of nature, 
And either shame the Devil or throw him out 
With wondrous potency." 

Not in the folio. The second and third quartos read " And either 
the devil " ; the later quartos, " And i7iaster the devil " ; thus leaving 
both sense and metre defective. Some editors combine the two read- 
ings, — "And either master the devil" ; but this, again, makes the line 
unmetrical. Pope and Capell read " And master even the devil " ; 
Malone, "And either curb the devil." But the Poet seems to have 
intended the alternative sense of either making the Devil glad to 
leave or compelling him to leave. And the phrase, " shame the Devil," 
was part of an old proverb, which Shakespeare quotes elsewhere. So 
in / Henry IV., iii., i : — 

" And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the Devil 
By telling truth ; tell truth, and shame the Devil ; 
If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither, 
And I'll be sworn I've power to shame him hence." 



ACT III., SCENE V. 

P. 167. Scene V. — Another Room in the Castle, 

Modern editions, generally, make the fourth Act begin here. None 
of the old copies have any marking of the Acts and Scenes, after the 
second Scene of the second Act ; and it seems very clear that there is 
no sufficient interval or pause in the action to warrant the beginning 
of a new Act in this place. I therefore agree with Caldecott and Elze 
that Act IV., ought to begin with the fourth Scene after. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 247 

P. 168. "O'er whom his very madness, \\^<^ fine ore 
Among a mineral of metals base," &c. 

So Walker. The old text has some instead of fine. As so77ie would 
naturally be written with the long s, such a misprint might easily 
occur. 

P. 168. "But we will ship him hence ; and this vile deed 
We must, with all our majesty and skill, 
Both countenance and excuse." 

The quartos have " this vile deed," the folio, " this vilde deed." I 
strongly suspect it ought to be " this wild deed " ; that is, mad or 
crazy. The epithet zvild just suits the case : and, as the King knows 
that the Queen fully believes Hamlet to be mad, is it likely that in 
speaking to her of the act he would use the epithet vile ? And the 
King himself says, a little after, " Hamlet in madness hath Polonius 
slain." The two words vilde and wilde ^txe often confounded. 

P. 169. "And let them know both what we mean to do 

And what's untimely done : so, haply, slander — 
Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter," &c. 

So Capell. The words so, haply, slander are wanting in all the old 
copies. This leaves the sentence without any subject ; and some inser- 
tion is imperatively required, Theobald reads "fior, haply, slander." 
Malone reads "So viperous slander," as the Poet has, in Cymbeline 
iii., 4, " the secrets of the grave this viperous slander enters." But in 
the present passage the sense of viperous is given in "poisoned shot." 



ACT III., SCENE VI. 

P. 1 70. " He keeps them, as an ape doth nuts in the cor- 
ner of his jaw." 

The words as an ape doth nuts are from the corresponding passage 
of the first quarto. The other quartos read " he keepes them like an 
apple in the corner," &c.; the folio, " He keepes them like an Ape in 
the corner." 



248 HAMLET. 



ACT III., SCENE VII. 

P. 1 74. " And thou must cure me : till I know 'tis done, 
Howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begmi.^^ 

So the folio. The quartos read "my joyes will nere beginP The 
change was doubtless made in the folio in order to have the scene end 
with a rhyme. But is the rhyme worth the breach of grammar which 
it costs? I should certainly read with the quartos, but that Walker, 
Dyce, the Cambridge editors, Singer, Staunton, and White all prefer 
the folio reading. 

ACT IV., SCENE I. 

P. 175. "Truly to speak, sir, and with no addition. 

We go to gain a little patch of ground," &c. 

So Capell. The old copies lack sir in the first line. Pope reads 
"Truly to speak zV," &c. 

ACT rV., SCENE II. 

P. 1 78. " 'Twere good she were spoken with ; for she may 
strew 
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds. 
Queen. Let her come in." 

The quartos assign all this to Horatio ; the folio gives it all to the 
Queen. The first two lines clearly ought not to be spoken by the 
Queen ; and there can be little doubt that, as Hanmer judged, her 
speech ought to begin with " Let her come in "; which of course marks 
her final yielding to Horatio's urgent request. 

P. 179. " Which bewepi to the grave did go 
With true-love showers^ 

So Pope, and most editors since. The old copies all read " to the 
grave did not go"; which is manifestly against all reason both of 
metre and of sense. 



CRITICAL NOTES. 249 

P. 182. " Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brows 
Of my true mother." 
Instead of brotvs, the old copies have browe and brow. 

P. 184. " It shall as level to your judgment /zVr^^ 
As day does to your eye." 
So the folio. Instead of pierce, the quartos have peare, which Dyce 
eliangely prefers, printing it 'pear. 

P. 185. " Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge. 
It could not move me thus." 
So Walker. The old copies are without me. 

P. 186. ^' No, no, he is dead, 

Gone to his death-bed; 
He never will come again." 
So Corner's second folio. The old copies have ''go to thy ^ Death- 
bed." The correction is well approved by a similar passage in East- 
ward Ho, written by Jonson, Maiston, and Chapman : — 
" But now he is dead, and lain in his bed, 
And never will come again." 

ACT IV., SCENE IV. 

P. 192. " Will you be ruled by me? 

So you will not o'errule me to a peace." 

SoCapell. Not in the folio. The quartos, except the first, read *^ I 
my lord." /was commonly printed for the affirmative ay, as well as 
for the pronoun ; and so modern editors generally print Ay. But this 
leaves an ugly gap in the metre. The probability is, that will dropt 
out in the printing or the transcribing. 

P. 193. "Upon my life, Lamondr 

So Pope. The quartos have Lamord; the folio, Lamound. 



250 HAMLET. 

P. 194. " Sir, this report of his 

Did Hamlet so envenom with your envy," &c. 

The old copies read "with his envy"; his having probably slipped 
in by mistake from the line above. At all events, as Walker observes, 
the old text can hardly have any meaning but that " Hamlet did enven- 
om this report " ; v^^hich I cannot easily believe to have been the Poet's 
thought. Of course, v^'ith your, the meaning is, " this report did so en- 
venom Hamlet vsrith envy of you." See foot-note 21. 

P. 195. "And then this should is Uke a spendthrift si^. 

That hurts by easing." 

So the quarto of 1637. The earlier quartos have " d>. spend-thrifts 
sigh." The passage is not in the folio. 

P. 197. "How now, sweet Queen !" 

So the second folio. The first omits now; accidentally, no doubt. 
The quartos, after 1603, have "but stay, whdX noyse." 

P. 198. " I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze, 
But that this folly df^owns it." 

So the quartos. Instead of drowns, the folio has doubts, which 
Knight changes to douts. 

ACT v., SCENE I. 

P. 206. "I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty 
years." 
" This skull has lain in the earth three-djcid-twenty years." 

These statements, taken together with a preceding speech, infer 
Hamlet's age to be thirty years ; which cannot well be reconciled with 
what Laertes and Polonius say of him in i., 3. Mr. Halliwell substi- 
tutes dozen for three-and-twenty, and quotes from the first quarto, 
" Here's a skull hath bin here this dozen yeare." But, as Mr. Furness 
observes, it is by no means certain that the Clown refers to the same 
skull there as here : he may have just turned up another. I cannot 
help suspecting that the Poet wrote " 20 yeares," and " 3 & 10 yeares," 



CRITICAL NOTES. 2$ I 

and that the 2 and i got corrupted into 3 and 2. It would be not un- 
like the Clown's manner, to put three-and-ten for thirteen. This, of 
course, would make Hamlet twenty years old ; which is just about the 
age wanted, 

P. 206. " This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the King's 
jester." 

So the quartos, except that they have ^^ sir Yorick's," sir being 
doubtless repeated by mistake. The folio reads " This same Scull Sir, 
this same Scull sir, was Yoricks Scull." What should be the use or 
sense of this repetition, does not appear. 

P. 208. " Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants, 
Her maiden strewments," &c. 

So the quartos. The folio has rites instead of crants. 

P. 210. "Woo't drink up Esill? eat a crocodile?" 

So read all the quartos except the first, which has vessels. The 
folio has Esile, printed in Italic, as if to mark it as a proper name. 
This would naturally infer that some stream or body of water was 
meant. Theobald, and some others after him, read eisel, which is an 
old word for vinegar. With that word, we must take drijzk tip as 
simply equivalent to drijik ; and would Hamlet in such a case be likely 
to mention such a thing as drinking vinegar ? Surely not much of a 
feat to be coupled with eating a crocodile. So that I cannot reconcile 
myself to the reading eisel. See foot-note 29. 



ACT v., SCENE II. 

P. 212. "Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well. 
When our deep plots do /<:z//." 

So the second quarto. The other quartos have fall instead of pall. 
The folio has paule, which is probably but another spelling of pall. 
Pope substituted yfezV, and some editors have followed him. But what 
need of change? See foot-note 4. 



252 HAMLET. 

P. 213. "Being thus be-netted round with villainies " ^c. 
The old copies have villaines. Corrected by Capell. 

P„ 214. "And stand a cement 'tween their amities." 

Instead of cement, which is Hanmer's reading, the old copies have 
co7nma. The image of peace standing as a comma between two per- 
sons, to hold them friends, goes rather hard. In Antony and Cleopatra, 
iii., 2, Cgesar speaks to Antony of Octavia, as " the piece of virtue which 
is set betwixt us as the cement of our love, to keep it builded." 

P. 216. "Does it not, think^st thou, stand me now upon?" 

The quartos have thinke thee ; the folio, thinkst thee. Rowe cor- 
rected thee to thou. 

P. 217. " For by the image of my cause I see 

The portraiture of his : I'll court his favours." 

This is not in the quartos, and the folio has count instead of court. 
Corrected by Rowe. 

P. 219. " To divide him inventorially would dizzy the arith- 
metic of memory, and yet but yaw neither," &c. 

So the quarto of 1604. The other quai^tos have ra^a instead of yaw. 
The context shows yaw to be right. Dyce undertakes to help the 
sense by substituting it for yet; which, to my thinking, just defeats the 
sense. Staunton proposes to substitute wit,- which would have the 
same effect. See foot-notes 28 and 29. — The speech is not in the folio; 
nor has the first quarto any traces of it. 

P. 2 2 2. "A kind of yesty collection, which carries them 
through and through the most /o7id and winnowed opin- 
ions j " &c. 

So the folio. The second and third quartos have "most prophane 
and trennowed o^vs\\oxi% ;" the later quartos the same, except that they 
substitute trennowned for trennowed. Warburton changed the folio 
reading to " most fanned and winnowed opinions," which several edit- 
ors have adopted. But surely fond gives a natural and fittirig sense, -^ 



CRITICAL NOTES. 253 

affected or conceited; while the sense of fanned is fully expressed by 
winnowed. See foot-note 43. 

P. 223. "The readiness is all: since no man knows aught 
of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? " 

So Johnson. The quartos read " The readines is all, since no man 
of ought he leaves, knowes what ist to leave betimes, let be." The 
folio reads "The readinesse is all, since no man ha's aught of what 
he leaves. What is't to leave betimes?" Modern editors differ a good 
deal in their readings of the passage. The Cambridge editors print 
as follows : " The readiness is all ; since no man has aught of what he 
leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be." 

P. 227. "He's hot, and scant of breath." 

Instead of hot, the old text has fat; which seems decidedly out of 
place here, as a word is required signifying something peculiar to Ham- 
let in his present situation or at the present moment. The reading in 
the text was lately proposed by Plehwe, a Gei-man Shakespearian, who 
justly quotes in support of it from iv., 4 : " When in your motion you 
are hot and dry." It has also been proposed, by " Mr, H, Wyeth, of 
Winchester," to x&z.^ faint, which is perhaps better in itself, but does 
not infer so. easy a misprint. — For this reading and reference I am 
indebted, immediately, to Mr. Furness's variorum edition. 

P. 230. ^^ Hora. The rest is silence : 

Now cracks a noble heart. — Good night, sweet Prince." 

The old editions print " The rest is silence " as the close of Ham- 
let's preceding speech. The words are evidently quite out of place 
there : it is simply incredible that the dying Prince should so spend 
his last breath. This has, apparently, been felt by some others ; but I 
am not aware that any one has made the change. I saw the need of 
it long ago. 



Press-icork by Rockioell d' Clim^chill, 



